Word.ws English Dictionary

excelled

excelled is the simple past and past participle of excel.

Meaning of excel

Verb

excel (third-person singular simple present excels, present participle excelling, simple past and past participle excelled)

  1. (transitive) To surpass someone or something; to be better or do better than someone or something.
    • I excelled everyone else with my exam results.
  2. (reflexive) To do much better than usual.
    • Everyone agreed Magnus really excelled himself this tournament.
  3. (intransitive) To be much better than others.
    • But it is as a destroyer of grasshoppers that the dickcissel excels.1901, Sylvester D. Judd, The Relation of Sparrows to Agriculture, page 91
    Synonyms:
    rock, rule
  4. (archaic, rare, transitive) To exceed, to go beyond.
    • She opened; but to shut / Excelled her power: the gates wide open stood […]1674, John Milton, Paradise lost, book II

See all 5 meanings of excel

Questions about excelled

What is excelled the simple past and past participle of?
Excelled is the simple past and past participle of excel.

Words near excelled in the dictionary

  1. exceedingness
  2. exceedings
  3. exceeds
  4. excel
  5. excell
  6. excelled
  7. excellence
  8. excellences
  9. excellencies
  10. excellency
  11. excellent

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: excelled (page history and authors); excel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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