exhilarating

Etymology

verb

1. present participle and gerund of exhilarate

adj

1. Refreshingly thrilling.
   What most delights us today in Candide is not the 'conte philosophique', nor its satire, nor the gradual emergence of a morality and vision of the world: instead it is its rhythm. With rapidity and lightness, a succession of mishaps, punishments and massacres races over the page, leaps from chapter to chapter, and ramifies and multiplies without evoking in the reader's emotions anything other than a feeling of an exhilarating and primitive vitality. 1991, Italo Calvino, “Candide, or Concerning Narrative Rapidity”, in Martin McLaughlin, transl., Why Read the Classics?, New York, N.Y.: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, published 2014, page 103
   Writing a "Treehouse of Horror" segment has to be both exhilarating and daunting. It's exhilarating because it affords writers all the freedom in the world. 29 April 2012, Nathan Rabin, “The Simpsons (Classic): ‘Treehouse Of Horror III’”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 2016-10-17
   Like many other large resorts, the town operated electric tramways, with open-topped cars. The journey down the steep incline to the harbour must have been exhilarating at times, testing the brakes on the vehicles to the limit. September 8 2021, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Electric tramways at the heart of our seaside story”, in RAIL, number 939, page 59