- ecstasy
- ecstasy n Ecstasy, rapture, transport denote a feeling or a state of intense, sometimes excessive or extreme, mental and emotional exaltation.Ecstasy in its earlier sense, which is now found chiefly in religious and poetical writings, implies a trancelike state in which consciousness of one's surroundings is lost and the mind is intent either on what it contemplates (as does the mystic) or on what it conceives and creates (as does the inspired poet or artist){
like a mad prophet in an ecstasy— Dryden
}{anthems clear, as may with sweetness, through mine ear, dissolve me into ecstasies, and bring all Heaven before mine eyes— Milton
}In later and now general use the term implies overmastering, entrancing joy, or other emotion that exalts the mind and overcomes the senses{men in whom the manual exercise of combat seems to light a wonderful fire in the blood. To them battle brings ecstasy. They are ravished above pain and fear— Montague
}{she loved him with an acute, painful ecstasy that made her dizzy and blinded her to all the world besides— Rose Macauiay
}{their faces were fixed in a calm ecstasy of malevolence— Wylie
}Rapture in its early religious use and still occasionally in theology, mysticism, and poetry differs from ecstasy in implying a lifting of the mind or soul out of itself by divine power, so that it may see things beyond the reach of human vision; the experiences narrated by the Apostle Paul of being caught up to the third heaven are in this sense raptures. In its chief current sense rapture merely implies intense bliss or beatitude with or without the connotation of accompanying ecstasy or loss of perception of everything else{I drank it in, in a speechless rapture— Mark Twain
}{as a child I first read Pope's Homer with a rapture which no subsequent work could ever afford— Byron
}{she burned again with the same ecstasy, the same exaltation. How fine it had been, to live in that state of rapturel— Sackville-West
}{continual ups and downs of rapture and depression— Wharton
}Transport applies to any violent or powerful emotion that lifts one out of oneself and, usually, provokes enthusiastic or vehement expression{I mean to . . . support with an even temper, and without any violent transports ... a sudden gust of prosperity— Fielding
}{transports of rage— Austen
}{what a transport of enthusiasm!— Landor
}{in art, as in poetry, there are the transports which lift the artist out of . . . himself— Pater
}{a periodical that is weekly moved to transports of delight about contemporary America— Bliven b. 1889
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
