Exciting or possibly exploiting (7)
I believe the answer is:
rousing
'exciting' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'or possibly exploiting' is the wordplay.
'possibly' indicates anagramming the letters.
'exploiting' becomes 'using' (I've seen this before).
'or' with letters rearranged gives 'ro'.
'ro'+'using'='ROUSING'
(Other definitions for rousing that I've seen before include "Stirring" , "becomes animated" , "Sour gin (anag.)" .)