Excitive

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    That which excites; an excitant. archaic
Adjective
  1. 1
    excited archaic

    "Our own sense of danger, together with the imaginative effect wrought upon our excitive minds by the dancing candlelight and the awesome shadows of the still house, gave a strange relish to our childhood reading."

  2. 2
    Serving or tending to excite; excitative.

    "What I have denominated the common excitive fever, is a febrile affection common to almost every climate, but particularly to that of Great Britain […]"

Example

More examples

"Our own sense of danger, together with the imaginative effect wrought upon our excitive minds by the dancing candlelight and the awesome shadows of the still house, gave a strange relish to our childhood reading."

Etymology

From excite + -ive.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.