An overwhelming, self-transcending exaltation.
An overwhelming, self-transcending exaltation — rapturous delight so intense it approaches a trance.
With rapture, the top tier: an exaltation so consuming it verges on a trance and near-stillness, its root meaning “standing outside oneself,” swept past reason and self-command. It holds the religious and mystical “trance” sense most strongly, and — unlike rapture — can attach to any overpowering emotion (joy, fear, even rage), not bliss alone. A peak, absorbing state rather than a buoyant mood (euphoria), a stimulated thrill (exhilaration), or outward celebration (jubilation).
A state of overwhelming, rapturous delight.
The dominant modern positive sense (from the 1610s).
A trance in which the soul, exalted, contemplates the divine while the body is stilled.
The older sense, strong in 17th-century mystical writing; from Greek ekstasis, “standing outside oneself.”
The illicit drug MDMA.
Slang sense dated to 1985; now a standard capitalized dictionary sense.
Late 14c., from Old French estaise, from Greek ekstasis “entrancement, displacement, a standing outside (oneself),” from existanai “to displace, drive out of one's mind” (ek “out” + histanai “to stand”).
Shifted from “trance / displacement of mind” toward “exalted good feeling” by the 1610s, aided by 17th-century mystical writers. A well-documented recent sense: the drug MDMA, from 1985.