Exhilarate
verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 To cheer, to cheer up, to gladden, to make happy, to elate. transitive
"Good news exhilarates the mind; wine exhilarates the drinker."
- 2 fill with sublime emotion wordnet
- 3 To excite, to thrill. transitive
"[A]lcohol, as all the world knows, or should know, does not nourish, but only stimulates,—exhilarates if you will, but exhilarates as fire exhilarates! Would carbon or any other combustible exhilarate only to burn up, consume, and destroy?"
Example
More examples"A Christmas present like that will certainly exhilarate him."
Etymology
From Latin exhilarō (“to delight, to gladden, to make merry”), from ex- (“out, away”) (from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵʰs (“out”)) + hilarō (“to cheer, to gladden”), from hilaris (“cheerful, light-hearted, lively”), from Ancient Greek ἱλαρός (hilarós, “cheerful, merry”), from ἵλαος (hílaos, “gracious, kind, propitious”), from Proto-Indo-European *selh₂- (“comfort, mercy”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.