Past tense of excel
regular verb
The past tense of excel is excelled. The past participle is also excelled.
Forms of excel
| Base form (V1) | excel /ɪkˈsɛl/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | excelled |
| Past participle (V3) | excelled |
| Present participle | excelling |
| Third person singular | excels |
Excelled in a sentence
- I excelled everyone else with my exam results.
- Everyone agreed Magnus really excelled himself this tournament.
- He excelled at rowing and received a blue in the sport at Oxford.From the entry blue
- It's admirable that Shelley overcame her handicap and excelled in her work.From the entry admirable
- The tutor excelled in comical scoldings.From the entry comical
Meaning of excel
- verb To surpass someone or something; to be better or do better than someone or something.
- verb To do much better than usual.
- verb To be much better than others.
Questions about the past tense of excel
- What is the past tense of excel?
- The past tense of excel is excelled.
- What is the past participle of excel?
- The past participle of excel is excelled.
- Is excel a regular or irregular verb?
- Excel is a regular verb: its past tense doubles the last letter and adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: excel (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of excel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/excel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.