Ecstacy (for Ecstasy)

Scaling the heights of the Ballard list, there are 112 hits of Ecstacy in OhioLINK, revealing what is clearly a very commonly misspelled word. This is most likely because we are so familiar with the feminine name Stacy and because there are so few words at all that end with either -stacy or -stasy (apparently, like the legs of an arachnid, there are eight such words in total, four of each). Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) was probably ecstatic with his first girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, and fortunately for him that didn't require knowing whether the noun form takes an s or a c. But for those of us who wish to please our patrons, it's a sticking point we really ought to master. (Drawing of Gwen Stacy by Steve Rude, from [correction] Spider-Man: Life-Line #3.)

Carol Reid