Word.ws English Dictionary

present company excepted

present company excepted phrase: these negative remarks do not pertain to anyone who is currently listening to them (including the speaker).

Phrase

present company excepted

  1. (idiomatic) These negative remarks do not pertain to anyone who is currently listening to them (including the speaker).
    • Everybody it appears, the present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs Snagsby’s peace.1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 54, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC
    • "I say, Reggie, old thing—present company excepted—have there been any loonies in your family?"1920 March – 1921 February, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter 26, in Indiscretions of Archie, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, […], published 1921, →OCLC

Examples of present company excepted in a sentence

  • Am I glad we finally got rid of all those Klingons—er, present company excepted, of course.1995 October 2, Ira Steven Behr, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, “The Way of the Warrior”, in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 4, episode 1, spoken...
  • Well, even Stanford guys aren't perfect (present company excepted, of course).2009 December 2, Romesh Ratnesar, Bill Saporito, “How Will Tiger Woods' Apology Affect His Image?”, in Time:

Forms of present company excepted

alternative formpresent company excluded

Questions about present company excepted

What does present company excepted mean?
Present company excepted means these negative remarks do not pertain to anyone who is currently listening to them (including the speaker).
How do you use present company excepted in a sentence?
Am I glad we finally got rid of all those Klingons—er, present company excepted, of course.
What part of speech is present company excepted?
Present company excepted is a phrase.

Words near present company excepted in the dictionary

  1. presensitized
  2. present
  3. present active participle
  4. present active participles
  5. present arms
  6. present company excepted
  7. present company excluded
  8. present conditional
  9. present conditionals
  10. present continuous
  11. present historic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: present company excepted (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-present company excepted.ogg.

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