EXCITE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Excite

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/ɪksˈaɪt/ Listen

verb

Excite v. t. (past & past part. excited; pres. part. exciting)

1.

To call to activity in any way; to rouse to feeling; to kindle to passionate emotion; to stir up to combined or general activity; as, to excite a person, the spirits, the passions; to excite a mutiny or insurrection; to excite heat by friction.

2.

(Physiol.) To call forth or increase the vital activity of an organism, or any of its parts.

3.

(Elec.) To energize (an electro-magnet); to produce a magnetic field in; as, to excite a dynamo.

4.

(Physics) To raise to a higher energy level; used especially of atoms or molecules, or of electrons within atoms or molecules; as, absorption of a photon excites the cesium atom, which subsequently radiates the excess energy.

Synonyms: To incite; awaken; animate; rouse or arouse; stimulate; inflame; irritate; provoke. To Excite, Incite. When we excite we rouse into action feelings which were less strong; when we incite we spur on or urge forward to a specific act or end. Demosthenes excited the passions of the Athenians against Philip, and thus incited the whole nation to unite in the war against him. Antony, by his speech over the body of Caesar, so excited the feelings of the populace, that Brutus and his companions were compelled to flee from Rome; many however, were incited to join their standard, not only by love of liberty, but hopes of plunder.

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Etymology of 'Excite'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Excite" Quotes from Famous Books

... connected with the discovery of Dr. Jenner which were of a nature to excite repugnance and opposition. The practice of inoculation for the small-pox had already disarmed that disease of many of its terrors. The introduction of a contagious disease from a brute creature into the human system naturally struck the public mind with a sensation of disgust ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... displayed this impassiveness when Europeans were trying to make them exhibit signs of surprise. Impassivity is a point of honour with many uncivilised races, and we cannot infer that a savage has no curiosity because he does not excite himself over a mirror, or when his European visitors try to swagger with their mechanical appliances. Mr. Herbert Spencer founds, on the statements of Mr. Bates already quoted, a notion that "the savage, lacking ability to think and ...

— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... eagerly about. The two children trotted at their heels. She talked glowingly. They stood at a low spot at the foot of the garden and she spoke of the necessity of putting in tile. The prospect seemed to excite her. "It will be the best land on the place when it's drained," she said. She stooped and with a trowel turned over the soft black soil. An odor arose. "See! Just see how rich and black it is!" she exclaimed ...

— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... the drift-wood on the beach, we made ourselves pleasant little lodges, open to the water, and, after having kindled large fires, to excite the wonder of any straggling savage on the lake shores, lay down, for the first time in a long journey, in perfect security, no one thinking about his arms. The evening was extremely bright and pleasant. But the wind rose during the night, ...

— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right ...

— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

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