Noun

Intense pleasure.

* Shakespeare

This is the very ecstasy of love.

* Milton

He on the tender grass / Would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy .

A state of emotion so intense that a person is carried beyond rational thought and self-control.

* Dryden

like a mad prophet in an ecstasy

A trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation.

(obsolete) Violent emotion or distraction of mind; excessive grief from anxiety; insanity; madness.

* Shakespeare

That unmatched form and feature of blown youth / Blasted with ecstasy .

* Marlowe

Our words will but increase his ecstasy .

(slang) The drug MDMA, a synthetic entactogen of the phenethylamine family.

(medicine, dated) A state in which sensibility, voluntary motion, and (largely) mental power are suspended; the body is erect and inflexible; but the pulse and breathing are not affected.

(Mayne)

Noun

(-)

the state of being sportive

*{{quote-book, year=1890, author=Theo. Stephenson Browne, title=In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=You will see the tame horse in the paddock gallop about for his pleasure, and the wild horse on the prairie will start and run for miles in mere sportiveness . }}

*{{quote-book, year=1922, author=David Garnett, title=Lady Into Fox, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=Then he would play with his vixen, she encouraging him with her pretty sportiveness . }}

*{{quote-book, year=1907, author=Edited by Rev. James Wood, title=The Nuttall Encyclopaedia, chapter=, edition= citation

, passage=OMAR KHAYYAM, astronomer-poet of Persia, born at Naishapur, in Khorassan; lived in the later half of the 11th century, and died in the first quarter of the 12th; wrote a collection of poems which breathe an Epicurean spirit, and while they occupy themselves with serious problems of life, do so with careless sportiveness , intent he on the enjoyment of the sensuous pleasures of life, like an easy-going Epicurean. }}