The Etymology of Ecstasy

This is what a suitor once thought comprised the essence of a love note... maybe he was right. I do love to play the etymology game.

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Subject: ecstasy

quoth the OED

Etymology:  < Old French extasie, (after words in -sie, < Latin -sia) < medieval Latin extasis, < Greek ἔκστασις, < ἐκστα- stem of ἐξιστάναι to put out of place (in phrase ἐξιστάναι ϕρενῶν ‘to drive a person out of his wits’), < ἐκ out + ἱστάναι to place. The modern English spelling shows direct recourse to Greek The French extase is < medieval Latin or Greek. 

The classical senses of ἔκστασις are ‘insanity’ and ‘bewilderment’; but in late Greek the etymological meaning received another application, viz., ‘withdrawal of the soul from the body, mystic or prophetic trance’; hence in later medical writers the word is used for trance, etc., generally. Both the classical and post-classical senses came into the mod. languages, and in the present fig. uses they seem to be blended.

 OF. extasie, (after words in -sie, ad. L. -sia) f. med.L. extasis, a. Gr. to put out of place (in phrase to drive a person out of his wits’), f. out +  to place.

1. The state of being ‘beside oneself’, thrown into a frenzy or a stupor, with anxiety, astonishment, fear, or passion.

1382   Bible (Wycliffite, E.V.) Acts iii. 10   Thei weren fulfillid with wondryng, and exstasie, that is, leesyng of mynde of resoun and lettyng of tunge.

?a1400   Chester Pl. (1847) ii. 113,   I knowe‥ That you be in greate exstacye.

1592   Marlowe Jew of Malta i. ii. 217   Our words will but increase his ecstasy.

a1616   Shakespeare Macbeth (1623) iii. ii. 24   To lye In restlesse extasie.

1634   T. Herbert Relation Trav. 201   With a great and sudden Army he entred‥In which extasie the English Factors fled to Bantam.

1834   B. Disraeli Revol. Epick i. ii. 2   The crouching beasts Cling to the earth in pallid ecstasy.

2. Pathol.†a. By early writers applied vaguely, or with conflicting attempts at precise definition, to all morbid states characterized by unconsciousness, as swoon, trance, catalepsy, etc.

1598   J. Marston Metamorph. Pigmalions Image 3   Beames‥shoote from out the fairenes of her eye: At which he stands as in an extasie.

1600   P. Holland tr. Livy Rom. Hist. xliiii. xv. 179   The principall person of the embassage‥fell downe flat before them in a swoune and extasie.

a1616   Shakespeare Othello (1622) iv. i. 78,   I‥layed good scuse, vpon your extacy [stage direct. to line 42: He fals downe, 1623 Falls in a Trauncs].

1702   Clarendon's Hist. Rebellion I. iii. 160   The Ministers of the State‥like men in an Extasy‥had no Speech or Motion.

 b. In modern scientific use. (See quot.)

1866   A. Flint Treat. Princ. Med. 628   Ecstasy. In this condition, the mind, absorbed in a dominant idea, becomes insensible to surrounding objects.

1882   R. Quain Dict. Med. , s.v.,   The term ecstasy has been applied to certain morbid states of the nervous system, in which the attention is occupied exclusively by one idea, and the cerebral control is in part withdrawn from the lower cerebral and certain reflex functions. These latter centres may be in a condition of inertia, or of insubordinate activity, presenting various disordered phenomena, for the most part motor.

  
3. a. Used by mystical writers as the technical name for the state of rapture in which the body was supposed to become incapable of sensation, while the soul was engaged in the contemplation of divine things. Now hist. or allusive.

a1652   J. Smith Select Disc. (1660) iv. vi. 100   In such sober kind of Ecstacies did Plotinus find his own Soul separated from his Body.

1656   H. More Antidote Atheism (1712) iii. ix. 171   The Emigration of humane Souls from the bodie by Ecstasy.

1690   J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding ii. xix. 112   Whether that which we call Extasie, be not dreaming with the Eyes open, I leave to be examined.

1696   J. Aubrey Misc. (1721) 181/2   Things seen in an Extacy are more certain than those we behold in dreams.

1843   R. W. Emerson Transcendentalist in Dial Jan. 300   He [the Transcendentalist] believes in inspiration and in ecstasy.

1856   R. A. Vaughan Hours with Mystics (1860) I. iii. ii. 65   Ecstasy‥is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness.

1879   Lefevre Philos. i. 29   The Chaldæans and the Semites let loose on the West these wanton rites, the intoxication of the senses, and by a natural transposition, mystic ecstasy.

 

 b. The state of trance supposed to be a concomitant of prophetic inspiration; hence, Poetic frenzy or rapture. Now with some notion of 4.

1670   Milton Hist. Brit. ii. 63   Certaine women in a kind of ecstasie foretold of calamities to come.

1682   G. Burnet Hist. Rights Princes (new ed.) iv. 125   Eucherius, Bishop of Orleans‥being in an Extasy, saw him in Hell.

1751   T. Gray Elegy xii. 7   Hands‥wak'd to extacy the living lyre.

1757   T. Gray Ode I iii. ii, in Odes 10   He, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of Extasy.

1813   Scott Bridal of Triermain iii. xxxv. 188   [She] leant upon a harp, in mood Of minstrel ecstasy.

 4. An exalted state of feeling which engrosses the mind to the exclusion of thought; rapture, transport. Now chiefly, Intense or rapturous delight.