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

And that’s always, both as a writer and as a director, exhilarating, right? —Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 14 Nov. 2025

Peg Munson joined the lead on an exhilarating dune buggy adventure, and Cindy Cullers went on a boat ride with Owens that included swimming with stingrays. —Dina Kaur, AZCentral.com, 12 Nov. 2025

In this intimate portrait of life during the exhilarating early days of the women’s liberation movement in Scandinavia in the 1970s, Pernille Ipsen tells the stories of the seven women who raised her, who were all part of the women’s movement in Denmark. —Literary Hub, 10 Nov. 2025

The exhilarating Christmas Eve in Miller's Point wastes no time in assembling its massive cast of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws, and pet lizards. —Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 8 Nov. 2025

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