excitability

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Capability to be stimulated

Nouns

1. excitability, impetuosity, impatience, intolerance; irritability (see irascibility); disquiet[ude], agitation, jitters, cold sweat. Slang, heebie-jeebies, shakes, shivers, ants in one's pants. See sensibility, feeling.

2. (act of excitement) violence, fierceness, rage, mania, madness (see insanity), frenzy, hysterics, fanaticism, mass hysteria. Slang, wilding.

3. hothead, madcap; nervous Nellie, nervous wreck, bundle of nerves. Informal, Type A. Slang, headbanger.

Verbs

1. be excitable or impatient, champ at the bit, be in a stew, fidget, toss, jump, twitch, jerk, jitter, have the jitters; choke up.

2. lose one's temper, burst out; fly or go off [at a tangent]; explode, flare up, burn; boil [over], foam, fume, seethe, rage, rave, rant, have a fit, run wild, go mad; go into hysterics; run riot, run amuck, go off half-cocked; climb the wall, go off the deep end, go overboard. Slang, get one's goat; fly off the handle, flip one's lid, blow one's top or one's mind; push the panic button, have kittens, wig out.

Adjectives

1. excitable, seething, hot, boiling, burning; impatient, intolerant; feverish, frenzied, febrile, hysterical, unstrung; highstrung, mettlesome, jumpy, nervous, jittery, edgy, on edge, on pins and needles; skittish; mercurial (see changeableness); impulsive, impetuous, tempestuous, passionate, uncontrolled, ungovernable, irrepressible, madcap. Informal, flappable. Slang, uptight, goosey, strung out, untied, unglued, unravelled, unstuck, unstrung, unwrapped, all shook up, ape-shit.

2. violent, wild, fierce, fiery, hotheaded, irritable, irascible; demonstrative, boisterous, enthusiastic, impassioned, fanatical, rabid.

Antonyms, see inexcitability.