excite
Formsexcites, exciting, excited
- 1To stir up strong feelings in someone, especially eager anticipation or thrill.
Promises of adventure excite young travelers planning their first trip abroad.
The announcement excited fans who had waited years for the sequel.
Note
The word began as a summons. Latin excitō meant 'to call out, wake up, stimulate', from ex 'out' and cieō 'to call', the root shared with cite and incite. In this sense, what gets called out is a person: fireworks excite a crowd. Affect, move and touch are gentler words for stirring feeling, and calm and relax undo it. When the object is the feeling itself, the word has moved to the 'call forth' meaning.
- 2To arouse or draw out feelings; to stimulate a particular response.
Bright colors and bold shapes excite curiosity in young children.
His careless remarks excited anger among the committee members.
Similarprovoke, stimulate, evoke, incite, inflame
Note
Here the object is the feeling, not the person: favoritism excites jealousy, reforms excite unrest, and smugglers take care not to excite suspicion. The feelings called forth are often unwelcome, which is why instigate and provoke stand nearby. Older prose could also excite someone to act. Randolph Roscoe's The Emerald (1840) has people 'excited… to leave the room', where modern English would say urged.
- 3To cause an electron to move to a higher-than-normal energy state, promoting the electron to an outer level.
Photons of the right wavelength excite electrons in the semiconductor.
The laser excited the atom's outer electrons within nanoseconds.
Similarenergize
Note
Physics took the old idea of rousing quite literally. An excited electron has been lifted to a higher energy level, leaving its atom in a less stable excited state. The participle does much of the work, as in excited electrons and an excited atom. What goes up comes back down. In a neon lamp, the electron returns to normal by emitting a photon, and that photon is the light you see.
- 4To energize an electromagnet by passing current through it, producing a magnetic field within the device.
Operators excite the field windings before starting the generator.
The control circuit excited the electromagnet, locking the door shut.
Oppositede-energize
Note
Here what gets excited is a machine: a dynamo, a generator's field windings, an electromagnet. Passing current through the windings sets up the magnetic field the device needs before it can work. The object of the verb marks the difference from the electron sense: physicists excite particles, while engineers excite equipment.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English exciten, from Old French exciter, from Latin excitō ("to call out, call forth, arouse, wake up, stimulate"), a frequentative of excieō, built from ex ("out") plus cieō ("to call, summon").