Library / English Dictionary

EXCEL

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected forms: excelled    , excelling   

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Distinguish oneself

Example:

She excelled in math

Synonyms:

excel; stand out; surpass

Classified under:

Verbs of being, having, spatial relations

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "excel"):

exceed; go past; overstep; pass; top; transcend (be superior or better than some standard)

outrank; rank (take precedence or surpass others in rank)

excel at; shine at (be good at)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s

Derivation:

excellence (the quality of excelling; possessing good qualities in high degree)

excellent (very good; of the highest quality)

Credits

 Context examples: 

I had the means of an excellent education placed within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers, especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

They spend the greatest part of their lives in observing the celestial bodies, which they do by the assistance of glasses, far excelling ours in goodness.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

In poetry, they must be allowed to excel all other mortals; wherein the justness of their similes, and the minuteness as well as exactness of their descriptions, are indeed inimitable.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

However, this confirmed my first opinion, that a people who could so far civilise brute animals, must needs excel in wisdom all the nations of the world.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The second was of an opinion directly contrary; to tax those qualities of body and mind, for which men chiefly value themselves; the rate to be more or less, according to the degrees of excelling; the decision whereof should be left entirely to their own breast.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He lamented the fatal mistake the world had been so long in, of using silkworms, while we had such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave, as well as spin.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

He said that, the people of their island had their ears adapted to hear the music of the spheres, which always played at certain periods, and the court was now prepared to bear their part, in whatever instrument they most excelled.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But the danger is much greater, when the ministers themselves are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far that there is hardly one of them who has not received a fall, and some of them two or three.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The palace of a chief minister is a seminary to breed up others in his own trade: the pages, lackeys, and porters, by imitating their master, become ministers of state in their several districts, and learn to excel in the three principal ingredients, of insolence, lying, and bribery.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

This writer went through all the usual topics of European moralists, showing how diminutive, contemptible, and helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend himself from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts: how much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed, by a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)