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excite

verbattested in dialogue

  • //ɪkˈsaɪt//

To stir the emotions of; to cause to feel excitement.

verb

  1. 1

    To stir the emotions of; to cause to feel excitement.

    The fireworks which opened the festivities excited anyone present.

  2. 2

    To arouse or bring out (e.g. feelings); to stimulate.

    Favoritism tends to excite jealousy in the ones not being favored.

    The political reforms excited unrest among the population.

    Smugglers operating secretly so as not to excite suspicion.

    [S]he assured them […] that they had better follow her to a place of safety. They were at length excited, by her mere importunance to leave the room, and soon after the house.

  3. 3

    To cause an electron to move to a higher than normal state; to promote an electron to an outer level.

    By applying electric potential to the neon atoms, the electrons become excited, then emit a photon when returning to normal.

  4. 4

    To energize (an electromagnet); to produce a magnetic field in.

    to excite a dynamo

Etymology

From Middle English exciten, from Old French exciter, from Latin excitō (“to call out, call forth, arouse, wake up, stimulate”), frequentative of excieō (“to call out, arouse, excite”), from ex (“out”) + cieō (“to call, summon”). See cite and compare to accite, concite, incite.

Forms

past tense
excited
past participle
excited
present participle
exciting
third person singular
excites
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).