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To exhilarate someone is to fill them with a rush of excitement and happiness — the kind that lifts you and makes you feel alive. It is stronger and more physical than "please" or "cheer up": think of what fast movement, cold air, height, speed or sudden good news does to you. Riding a along the coast, standing on a mountain top, hearing you got the job — these things exhilarate you. The word is transitive, so something exhilarates someone; you cannot just "exhilarate" on your own. Honestly, though, the plain verb is not what students will meet most. In real English it lives mostly in its two participle forms: exhilarating (the thing that does it) and exhilarated (how you feel afterwards). Speakers reach for those constantly and for the bare verb only in writing, and even there it sounds a little literary. The feeling is short and sharp — an exhilarating hour, not an exhilarating year.
使人興奮振奮、令人心情激昂（那種被速度、高處、好消息衝上來的快感）。比 excite 更帶「暢快、活過來」的身體感
組成ex- (here an intensifier, 'thoroughly') + Latin hilarare (to make cheerful), from hilaris (cheerful), which came from Greek hilaros (merry). So: to make someone thoroughly cheerful.
同家族的字
- hilarioussame Latin hilaris (cheerful) — but it drifted to mean extremely funny, not exciting
- exhilarationthe noun for the feeling this verb creates
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
exhilarateverb/ɪɡˈzɪləɹeɪt/
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To cheer, to cheer up, to gladden, to make happy, to elate.
- Good news exhilarates the mind; wine exhilarates the drinker.
- For the Philiſtian preſcribeth Cures of the minde in Phrenſies, and melancholy Paſsions; and pretendeth alſo to exhibite Medicines to exhilarate the minde, to confirme the courage, to clarifie the wits, to corroborate the memorie, and the like; but the ſcruples and ſuperſtitions of Diet, and other Regiment of the body in the ſect of the Pythagoreans, in the Hereſy of the Manicheas, and in the Lawe of Mahumes doe exceede; […]
- 2
To excite, to thrill.
- [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?
- 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.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。