excitedvsexcitedlyTell them apart

Quick tell: excited is a adjective, excitedly is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“excited” is an adjective and “excitedly” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,860
“excited” frequency rank
#26,781
“excitedly” frequency rank
28641
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature excited excitedly
Definition Having great enthusiasm, passion and energy. In an excited manner.

Letter map: excited vs excitedly

Shared letters muted; letters that set excited and excitedly apart highlighted. Shared run: 7. excited runs 7 letters (VCCVCVC) against excitedly's 9 (VCCVCVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
excited
9 ch
excitedly

Grammar separator: excited vs excitedly

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: excited is anadjective and excitedlyanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “excited” sits inside “excitedly”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28641, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

excited is recorded at frequency rank #1,860, classified as anadj, pronounced /ɪkˈsaɪtɪd/. excitedly is at rank #26,781, tagged as anadv.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 28641, this pair ranks #369,474 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of excited vs excitedly

Shared letters: cdeitx. Private to "excited": -. Private to "excitedly": ly.

"excited" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCVC  ·  "excitedly" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • excited ← ecxited · exccited · excietd · excitde · excitedd · excitted · exctied · exicted
  • excitedly ← ecxitedly · exccitedly · excietdly · excitdely · exciteddly · excitedlly · excitedlyy · excitedyl

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "excited" and "excitedly" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "excited" is an adjective and "excitedly" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "excited" or "excitedly" show up more?
"excited" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,860 in our English list, against #26,781 for "excitedly". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "excited" and "excitedly". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "excited" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "excitedly" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #369,474 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "excited" and "excitedly" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "exalted vs excited". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #369,474 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list