success
/səkˈsɛs/noun
success is spelled S-U-C-C-E-S-S. The wrong spelling people search most is sucess: about 1,320 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Success is a noun meaning “The achievement of one's aim or goal”. The plural of success is successes.
How many letters and syllables are in success?
| Letters | 7: S-U-C-C-E-S-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 115 times per million words; the 932nd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 2; the most searched, sucess, about 1,320 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 success?
Success is spelled S-U-C-C-E-S-S. 2 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 10 of the searches for success 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 success?
Success appears 115 times per million words in written English, the 932nd 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 success?
- /səkˈsɛs/
Success has 2 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-success.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of success
- successes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does success mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The achievement of one's aim or goal.
His third attempt to pass the entrance exam was a success.
- 2
Financial profitability.
Don't let success go to your head.
- 3
One who, or that which, achieves assumed goals.
Scholastically, he was a success.
- 4
The fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.
She is country music's most recent success.
- 5
obsoleteSomething which happens as a consequence; the outcome or result.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Success in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense achievement of one's aim or goal:
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 success come from?
Learned borrowing from Latin successus, from succēdō (“succeed”), from sub- (“next to”) + cēdō (“go, move”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).