Ecstatic (adjective) means feeling or expressing overwhelming happiness or joyful excitement. Its roots are in Greek, conveying a sense of being 'out of one's mind' with emotion.
Ecstatic (adjective) relates to or is marked by ecstasy, an intense emotion of joy or delight. It derives from Greek meaning 'to put out of place'.
| Word | ecstatic |
|---|---|
| Date | April 19, 2019 |
| Type | adjective |
| Syllables | ek-STAT-ik |
| Etymology | Ecstatic has been used in our language since the late 16th century, and the noun ecstasy is even older, dating from the 1300s. Both derive from the Greek verb existanai ("to put out of place"), which was used in a Greek phrase meaning "to drive someone out of his or her mind." That seems an appropriate history for words that can describe someone who is nearly out of their mind with intense emotion. In early use, ecstatic was sometimes linked to mystic trances, out-of-body experiences, and temporary madness. Today, however, it typically implies a state of enthusiastic excitement or intense happiness. |
| Examples | Greta and Paul were ecstatic when their daughter called to tell them that they were soon going to be grandparents. "Harold Pinter established himself as Britain's foremost dramatist by placing inscrutable characters in cryptic situations and he was bound to keep the production line in motion, knowing that his oblique scripts would be greeted by genuflecting reviewers, ecstatic professors of literature and shrewd thesps ululating with approval at every rehearsal." — Lloyd Evans, The Spectator, 24 Nov. 2018 |
| Definition | : of, relating to, or marked by ecstasy |
Tags: wordoftheday::adjective
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