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