A buoyant, exhilarated lifting of the spirits, usually following a success.
A buoyant, exhilarated lifting of the spirits, usually following a success — the feeling of walking on air.
A high, elevated joy whose core image is a lifting or swelling of the spirits, typically triggered by a specific success and intense but transient — a peak, not a steady state. Among its high-band neighbors: more spirits-buoyed (“cloud nine”) than thrill-driven exhilaration, without euphoria's clinical/drug shading, and less overwhelming than ecstasy or rapture. A faint historical trace of self-regard survives — elation once meant arrogance or vainglory.
Late 14c., originally “arrogance, vainglory,” from Latin elationem “a lifting up,” from efferre “to carry out” (ex- “out” + latus “carried”). The positive “buoyancy, joyfulness” sense dates from 1750.
An amelioration: from “arrogance / vainglory” to neutral-to-positive “lifting of spirits,” fully positive by 1750. Modern psychiatry also records a sense of “pathological euphoria.” No sourced recent-generation shift.