Which term refers to the excitation or stimulus applied to a system from an external source to generate an output?

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The input signal is the excitation you feed into a system from an outside source to drive its response. It can be a voltage, current, sound, or digital sequence that pushes the system to produce something observable as output. In other words, the input is what you apply to make the system behave, and the output is the result you observe after the system responds to that input. The other terms describe different ideas: an output signal is what comes out after processing the input; an error signal is the difference between a desired value and the actual output (used in control loops); an analogue signal is a type of signal (continuous-valued), not specifically the external driving stimulus.