excellence
/ˈɛksələns/noun
excellence is spelled E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-C-E. The wrong spelling people search most is excellance: about 190 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 32 of all searches for the word. Excellence is a noun meaning “The quality of being excellent; brilliance”. The plural of excellence is excellences.
How many letters and syllables are in excellence?
| Letters | 10: E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-C-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 12 times per million words; the 6,347th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, excellance, about 190 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell excellence?
Excellence is spelled E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-C-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 32 of the searches for excellence in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is excellence?
Excellence appears 12 times per million words in written English, the 6,347th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce excellence?
- /ˈɛksələns/
Excellence has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-excellence.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of excellence
- excellences plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does excellence mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The quality of being excellent; brilliance
John Davies was awarded for excellence in the field of computer security.
- 2
Something in which one excels.
- 3
An excellent or valuable quality; something at which any someone excels; a virtue.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Excellence in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense the quality of being excellent:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | excellence |
| German | Vortrefflichkeit |
| Portuguese | excelência |
| Spanish | excelencia, prestancia |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does excellence come from?
From Middle English excellence, from Old French excellence, from Latin excellentia.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).