ecstasy

Etymology

From Old French estaise (“ecstasy, rapture”), from Latin ecstasis, from Ancient Greek ἔκστασις (ékstasis), from ἐξίστημι (exístēmi, “I displace”), from ἐκ (ek, “out”) and ἵστημι (hístēmi, “I stand”).

noun

1. Intense pleasure.
2. A state of emotion so intense that a person is carried beyond rational thought and self-control.
3. A trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation.
   What! are you dreaming, Son! with Eyes cast upwards / Like a mad Prophet in an Ecstasy? 1692, John Dryden, Cleomenes, act IV, scene I
4. (obsolete) Violent emotion or distraction of mind; excessive grief from anxiety; insanity; madness.
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;
   The instant I drew out my case of instruments, the lady roused herself from her ecstasy, and has never had a similar attack. 1822 April, John Ware, “Dr. Reid's Essays on Hypochondriasis”, in The New-England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, volume 11, number 2, page 185
   Ecstasy bears a strong resemblance to catalepsy: in both cases the patients, during the paroxysm, lose all connexion with the physical world, being deprived of sense and voluntary motion; but in ecstasy, associations of the most pleasing and enchanting nature are established with an ideal existence in an unknown region, which might perhaps be poetically designated the fairy land of an undescried Elysium. May 2, 1835, Andrew Ellis, “Clinical Lecture on a case of Catalepsy, Occurring in the Jervis-Street Hospital, Dublin”, in The Lancet, volume 2, page 130
   In ecstasy the mind is absorbed with some fixed idea, generally of a religious character, and the patient becomes oblivious of surrounding events and objects. 1885, James Ross, Handbook of the Diseases of the Nervous System, page 344

verb

1. (intransitive) To experience intense pleasure.
2. (transitive) To cause intense pleasure in.
   Ali Agha jumped up, seized the visitor by the shoulder, compelled him to sit down, and, ecstasied by the old man's horror at the scene, filled a tumbler, and with the usual grotesque grimaces insisted upon his drinking it. 2011, Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah