Emily Dickinson Lexicon

EC'STA-SY, n. [Gr. εκστασις, from εξιστημι; εξ and ίστημι, to stand.]

1. Primarily, a fixed state; a trance; a state in which the mind is arrested and fixed, or as we say, lost; a state in which the functions of the senses are suspended by the contemplation of some extraordinary or supernatural object. Whether what we call ecstasy be not dreaming with our eyes open, I leave to be examined. Locke.
2. Excessive joy; rapture; a degree of delight that arrests the whole mind; as, a pleasing ecstasy; the ecstasy of love; joy may rise to ecstasy.
3. Enthusiasm; excessive elevation and absorption of mind; extreme delight. He on the tender grass / Would sit and hearken even to ecstasy. Milton.
4. Excessive grief or anxiety. [Not used.] Shak.
5. Madness; distraction. [Not used.] Shak.
6. In medicine, a species of catalepsy, when the person remembers, after the paroxysm is over, the ideas he had during the fit. Encyc