English
ecstasy
see also: Ecstasy
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /ˈɛk.stə.si/
Noun

ecstasy

  1. Intense pleasure.
    • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1,
      This is the very ecstasy of love, / Whose violent property fordoes itself / And leads the will to desperate undertakings / As oft as any passion under heaven / That does afflict our natures.
    • 1634, John Milton, Comus, lines 623-5,
      He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing; / Which when I did, he on the tender grass / Would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy,
  2. A state of emotion so intense that a person is carried beyond rational thought and self-control.
    • 1938, George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Chapter 14,
      They were thrown into ecstasies of suspicion by finding that we possessed a French translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf.
  3. A trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation.
    • 1692, John Dryden, Cleomenes, Act IV, Scene I,
      What! are you dreaming, Son! with Eyes cast upwards / Like a mad Prophet in an Ecstasy?
  4. (obsolete) Violent emotion or distraction of mind; excessive grief from anxiety; insanity; madness.
    • c. 1590, Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, Act I,
      Come, let us leave him; in his ireful mood / Our words will but increase his ecstasy.
    • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1,
      And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, / That suck'd the honey of his music vows, / Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, / Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; / That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth / Blasted with ecstasy.
  5. (slang) The drug MDMA, a synthetic entactogen of the methylenedioxyphenethylamine family, especially in a tablet form.
  6. (medicine, dated) A state in which sensibility, voluntary motion, and (largely) mental power are suspended; the body is erect and inflexible; but the pulse and breathing are not affected.
Synonyms Antonyms Related terms Translations Translations Translations Translations Verb

ecstasy (ecstasies, present participle ecstasying; past and past participle ecstasied)

  1. (intransitive) To experience intense pleasure.
  2. (transitive) To cause intense pleasure in.
Ecstasy
Noun

ecstasy (uncountable)

  1. (slang) Alternative letter-case form of ecstasy (“drug”)


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