successful
/səkˈsɛs.fəl/adjective
successful is spelled S-U-C-C-E-S-S-F-U-L. The wrong spelling people search most is succesful: about 500 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 11 of all searches for the word. Successful is an adjective meaning “Resulting in success; assuring or promoting success; accomplishing what was proposed; having the desired…”.
How many letters and syllables are in successful?
| Letters | 10: S-U-C-C-E-S-S-F-U-L |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 87 times per million words; the 1,223rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 7; the most searched, succesful, about 500 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 successful?
Successful is spelled S-U-C-C-E-S-S-F-U-L. 7 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for successful 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 successful?
Successful appears 87 times per million words in written English, the 1,223rd 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 successful?
- US /səkˈsɛs.fəl/
- US [səkˈsɛs.fɫ̩]
- Australia /səkˈses.fəl/
Successful 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-successful.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of successful
- more successful comparative
- most successful superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does successful mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Resulting in success; assuring or promoting success; accomplishing what was proposed; having the desired effect.
a successful use of medicine; a successful experiment; a successful enterprise
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Successful in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense resulting in success:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | ayant du succès, marqué de succès, couronné de succès |
| German | erfolgreich |
| Portuguese | bem-sucedido, conseguido, próspero |
| Spanish | exitoso, logrado, afortunado, de éxito |
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 successful come from?
From success + -ful.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).