excellent
/ˈɛk.sə.lənt/adjective
excellent is spelled E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T. The wrong spelling people search most is excelent: about 310 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 14 of all searches for the word. Excellent is an adjective meaning “Having excelled, having surpassed”.
How many letters and syllables are in excellent?
| Letters | 9: E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 54 times per million words; the 1,899th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 3; the most searched, excelent, about 310 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 excellent?
Excellent is spelled E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T. 3 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for excellent 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 excellent?
Excellent appears 54 times per million words in written English, the 1,899th 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 excellent?
- UK /ˈɛk.sə.lənt/
- UK /ˈɛk.sɪ.lənt/
- UK /ˈɛks.lənt/
Excellent 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: En-us-excellent.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of excellent
- more excellent comparative
- most excellent superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does excellent mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Having excelled, having surpassed.
- 2
Of higher or the highest quality; splendid.
- 3
Exceptionally good of its kind.
Bill and Ted had an excellent adventure last week in preparation for their history exam.
- 4
Superior in kind or degree, irrespective of moral quality.
adverb
- 1
obsoleteExcellently.
Lucian, in his tract de Mercede conductis, hath excellent well deciphered such men's proceedings in his picture of Opulentia […].
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate excellent?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of excellent: xlnt.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Excellent in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense of the highest quality:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | excellent |
| German | ausgezeichnet, hervorragend, großartig |
| Portuguese | excelente |
| Spanish | excelente, sobresaliente, excelso, macanudo, de buten, de bute |
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 excellent come from?
From Middle English excellent, from Old French excellent, from Latin excellēns (“elevated, exalted”), present participle of excellō (“elevate, exult”), equivalent to excel + -ent.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).