Ecstasy

How to spell ecstasy

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ecstasy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ecstasy mean?

1. nounA feeling of overwhelming happiness, joy, or delight.

Ecstasy in a sentence

• The crowd listened to the final movement in pure ecstasy.

• Her face showed obvious ecstasy when she opened the acceptance letter.

Where does ecstasy come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek ekstasis, which literally meant 'a standing outside oneself', built from ek 'out' and histanai 'to stand'. To the Greeks it described being displaced from one's normal state, whether through terror, trance, or overwhelming emotion. It passed into Latin as ecstasis and then into Old French as estasie before reaching English in the late 1300s, at first describing a state of frenzy or being beside oneself. Over the centuries the sense softened into the modern meaning of overwhelming delight or rapture. The original idea of 'standing out of' your ordinary self explains the unusual letter cluster after the 'e', and the late twentieth century then borrowed the word again as a street name for the drug MDMA, which was thought to produce that very feeling.

How the word is built

• ek- (out, from Greek ek 'out of')
• sta (to stand, from histanai)
• -sy (noun-forming, via -sis 'state of')