Excitement is the bubbling energy you feel when something good is coming. A rush of excitement, in her excitement, the excitement wore off.
It is usually uncountable, though excitements in the plural is used for events: the excitements of the week. Common phrases: cause excitement, generate excitement, the excitement of the crowd, and quite the excitement, which is faintly ironic. Note that excitement can also mean agitation more generally — a state of excitement — and in medicine it means a nervous system stirred up, with none of the happiness implied.
1nounexcitementThe energetic feeling that something good is coming.
“The excitement lasted about as far as the first roundabout.”
2nounstateA state of stirred-up feeling.
“In all the excitement nobody had locked the door.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
excitement is a state of feeling.
Old French excitement comes from Latin excitare, to rouse or call out — ex-, out, plus citare, to summon. The same citare gives cite, recite and incite, so excitement is the state of having been called out of yourself.
Old French
excitement
Middle English
excitement
English, today
excitement
From Middle English excitement, from Old French excitement, equivalent to excite + ment.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA