Ecstatic

How to spell ecstatic

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce ecstatic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does ecstatic mean?

1. adjectiveFeeling or showing overwhelming happiness or excited delight.

Ecstatic in a sentence

• She was ecstatic when the bank approved her mortgage.

• The whole team felt ecstatic after winning the contract.

Where does ecstatic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek ekstatikos, meaning 'apt to displace' or 'inclined to stand outside oneself', built on the noun ekstasis. That noun combined ek, meaning 'out', with the root of histanai, meaning 'to stand' or 'to place', so the literal idea was of a person standing outside their own body or normal mind. In early use it described a trance, a rapture, or a state in which the soul seemed to leave the body, and English picked it up in this mystical sense in the early 1600s by way of the Latinised form. Over time the religious flavour faded and the word came to mean simply overwhelming joy or delight. The same ekstasis root gives us the noun 'ecstasy', and the awkward 'cst' cluster, with that silent-feeling c after the e, is exactly what trips up writers who reach for the spelling from sound alone.

How the word is built

• ek- (out)
• stat (from histanai: to stand/place)
• -ic (adjective suffix)