Both Uses of
exuberant
in
The Fountainhead
- He kissed her impulsively, with the gay exuberance that made him irresistible at times, and flew out of the room, up the stairs.†
Chpt 1.2 *
- Learning came to Johnny automatically, as did all things: his able little fists, his healthy body, his startling good looks, his overexuberant vitality.†
Chpt 2.9overexuberant = excessively joyful and unrestrainedstandard prefix: The prefix "over-" in overexuberant means excessively. This is the same pattern as seen in words like overconfident, overemphasize, and overstimulate.
Definitions:
-
(1)
(exuberant) joyously unrestrained
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
More rarely, exuberance can refer to unrestrained enthusiasm that is not necessarily joyous (as in "the wild exuberance of a cavalry charge"). In another less common sense, it can refer to plants growing in extreme abundance.