Word of the Day:
exhilarate
What It Means
To cheer, to cheer up, to gladden, to make happy, to elate.
Good news exhilarates the mind; wine exhilarates the drinker.
Exhilarate in Context
“Harriet became suddenly conscious that every woman in the room was gazing furtively or with frank interest at Wimsey and herself, and the knowledge exhilarated her.”
Did You Know?
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”). By surface analysis, ex- + Latin hilar(ō) + -ate.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: exhilarate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “exhilarate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/exhilarate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
