exhilarating

adjective

ex·​hil·​a·​rat·​ing ig-ˈzi-lə-ˌrā-tiŋ 

: causing strong feelings of happy excitement and elation : thrilling

an exhilarating experience

… an exhilarating ride that allows participants to catch an aerial view like they've never seen before.

—Kathryn M. Roy

… I would like to convey the sense of flight as it was almost at the very beginning of itself, when everything about it was miraculous and dangerous and exhilarating.

—James Dickey

… an exhilarating career full of deals sealed at three-martini lunches.

—Andrea Cooper

exhilaratingly

ig-ˈzi-lə-ˌrā-tiŋ-lē 

adverb

an exhilaratingly funny performance

Synonyms of exhilarating

• exciting
• breathtaking
• thrilling
• interesting
• intriguing

Examples of exhilarating in a Sentence

no recording can capture the exhilarating feeling of being at a live rock concert

Recent Examples on the Web

But that beating-you-over-the-head quality is precisely what makes these tracks so exhilarating. — Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork, 25 June 2026

Australia’s Nestory Irankunda notched one of the group stage’s most exhilarating goals in the opener. — Steven Louis Goldstein, New York Times, 24 June 2026

At the end of the game, Hilton exited the stadium with the toddlers at her side, clearly still reeling from the exhilarating game-day experience. — Chanel Vargas, InStyle, 27 June 2026

And while Crocker has set a high bar for releases, this latest meets those expectations in some novel and borderline exhilarating ways. — David Thomas Tao, Forbes.com, 1 July 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1634, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for exhilarating

• accelerating
• accentuating
• accommodating
• accumulating
• adjudicating
• administrating
• affiliating
• agglutinating
• alienating
• alleviating
• amalgamating
• ameliorating