Excited means full of happy energy about something that is coming. Excited about the trip, so excited, the children were excited.
The preposition is about for the thing and for when it is somebody else's good news: excited for you. Excited by is used for what causes it. A common learner mistake is I am exciting for I am excited — the -ed form describes how you feel and the -ing form describes what causes the feeling, and that pair holds for bored, interested and frightened too. Note over-excited, which is what parents say at bedtime.
1adjectiveexcitedFull of happy energy about something coming.
“She was too excited to eat anything.”
2adjectiveagitatedAgitated and worked up.
“There is no point getting excited about it now.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
excited is a state of eager feeling.
Also accepted in games: thrilled
Proto-Indo-European
*keyh₂-
Latin
excitō — to call out, call forth, arouse, wake up, stimulate
Old French
exciter
Middle English
exciten
English
excite
English, today
excited
Built from
From excite + -ed. excite comes from Middle English exciten, from Old French exciter, from Latin excitō (“to call out, call forth, arouse, wake up, stimulate”), frequentative of excieō (“to call out, arouse, excite”), from ex (“out”) + cieō (“to call, summon”). See cite and compare to accite, concite, incite.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA