Which to use
“excellent” is an adjective and “excluent” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #1,865
- “excellent” frequency rank
- #28,164
- “excluent” frequency rank
- 30029
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | excellent | excluent |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Qui excelle ; qui possède toutes les qualités requises, très bon. | Troisième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de exclure. |
Where the eye mixes excellent and excluent
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 7 letters in sequence. excellent runs 9 letters (VCCVCCVCC) against excluent's 8 (VCCCVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Why the eye confuses excellent with excluent
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: excellent is \ɛk.sɛ.lɑ̃\ while excluent is \ɛks.kly\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30029, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
excellent is recorded at frequency rank #1,865, classified as anadj, pronounced \ɛk.sɛ.lɑ̃\. excluent is at rank #28,164, tagged as averb, pronounced \ɛks.kly\.
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 30029, this pair ranks #312,920 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of excellent vs excluent
Shared letters: celntx. Private to "excellent": -. Private to "excluent": u.
"excellent" · 9 letters · shape VCCVCCVCC · "excluent" · 8 letters · shape VCCCVVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "excellent" and "excluent" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "excellent" or "excluent"?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "excellent" and "excluent" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "excellent" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "excluent" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #312,920 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "excellent" and "excluent" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "excluent vs excusent". 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 #312,920 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.