exhilarating
Britishadjective
Other Word Forms
Explanation
Something exhilarating is so exciting it makes you a little giddy. "Snowboarding that black-diamond trail was exhilarating!" Zipping through the snow is certainly exhilarating, but ski bunnies and snowboarders might not choose this fancy adjective first. They might just yell, "Woohoo!" It's always been a fun-loving word; its Latin roots mean "gladden, cheer." A ride on a glass elevator with a cute vampire could be exhilarating, and so could a surprise party, or a ride on an old roller coaster. It can be so refreshing, you can't exhale after something exhilarating happens.
Vocabulary lists containing exhilarating
The Giver
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Essential Academic Vocabulary for Middle School Students, List 2
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The Joy Luck Club
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
And as is his talent, departing vision steward Anderson ties it up in a bow, with a nod to ”our terrifying and exhilarating future.”
From Slate • May 8, 2026
It’s an exhilarating time, almost like you’re starring in a movie.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 24, 2026
The result is an often exhilarating, often disturbing and always poignant tale of an artist and adventurer who lived to challenge the limits of what humans could do.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 13, 2026
How they could keep playing relentlessly and clinically; rugby from another dimension, creative, clinical and utterly exhilarating.
From BBC • Mar. 7, 2026
For the first time, I was free, and, better than free, employed; and now, unencumbered by the terrors of the night and pursuit, I was fully sensible of the exhilarating sensations of that liberty.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
