Exhilarating

How to spell exhilarating

12 letters · 5 syllables

14 of the 22 people asked to spell exhilarating in Spelling Garden got it wrong the first time.

The most common mistake is exhilirating. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

exhilirating exhilarating

What people typed instead

• exhilirating4 people
• exhilerating3 people

How to pronounce exhilarating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exhilarating mean?

1. adjectiveCausing a feeling of great excitement, energy, and happiness.

Exhilarating in a sentence

• The downhill ski run was an exhilarating rush of speed and cold air.

• Closing her first major deal gave her an exhilarating sense of achievement.

Where does exhilarating come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb exhilarare, meaning 'to gladden thoroughly' or 'to cheer up'. It was built from the intensifying prefix ex-, here adding the sense of 'completely', and the adjective hilaris, meaning 'cheerful' or 'merry'. That Latin hilaris was itself borrowed from the Greek hilaros, carrying the same idea of a glad, light-hearted mood. English adopted the verb 'exhilarate' in the early 1600s, at first meaning simply to make someone joyful, and the present participle 'exhilarating' came to describe anything that thrills or invigorates. The very same hilaris root sits inside the everyday word 'hilarious', and remembering that shared family is a handy way to hold on to the tricky silent h that follows the x.

How the word is built

• ex- (thoroughly)
• hilar (cheerful, from Latin hilaris)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ing (participle/adjective suffix)

People who misspell exhilarating also struggle with

Of the Spelling Garden players who got exhilarating wrong the first time, this is how many also got each of these wrong.

• connoisseur 86% of them got it wrong
• chihuahua 50% of them got it wrong