EXHILARATION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does exhilaration mean? 

• EXHILARATION (noun)
  The noun EXHILARATION has 1 sense:

1. the feeling of lively and cheerful joy

  Familiarity information: EXHILARATION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EXHILARATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The feeling of lively and cheerful joy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

excitement; exhilaration

Context example:

he could hardly conceal his excitement when she agreed

Hypernyms ("exhilaration" is a kind of...):

joy; joyfulness; joyousness (the emotion of great happiness)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "exhilaration"):

bang; boot; charge; flush; kick; rush; thrill (the swift release of a store of affective force)

intoxication (excitement and elation beyond the bounds of sobriety)

titillation (a tingling feeling of excitement (as from teasing or tickling))

Derivation:

exhilarate (fill with sublime emotion)

 Context examples 

His eyes shone, and his cheek was flushed with the exhilaration of the master workman who sees his work lie ready before him.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I have just received my dispatches, and taken my farewell of Allenham; and by way of exhilaration I am now come to take my farewell of you.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

He then returned to the punch, in the highest state of exhilaration.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Never have I travelled at such a pace, and never have I felt such a sense of exhilaration from the rush of keen upland air upon our faces, and from the sight of those two glorious creatures stretched to their utmost, with the roar of their hoofs and the rattle of our wheels as the light curricle bounded and swayed behind them.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St. John's taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)