Successful

How to spell successful

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce successful

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does successful mean?

1. adjectiveAchieving an aim or producing the intended favourable result, or having attained wealth, status, or recognition.

Successful in a sentence

• The launch was so successful that the product sold out within hours.

• After years of effort she became a successful architect with her own firm.

Where does successful come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is built on 'success', which came into English in the 1500s from the Latin successus, a noun meaning 'an advance, a good outcome, or a result'. That noun derived from the verb succedere, literally 'to go up' or 'to come after', formed from sub- 'under, up from below' and cedere 'to go or move'. At first 'success' simply meant any result, whether good or bad, but over time it narrowed to mean a favourable result. The adjective 'successful' was then formed by adding the native English suffix -ful, meaning 'full of' or 'marked by', so it describes someone or something full of success. The same cedere root, meaning 'to go', still lurks in relatives like 'proceed', 'recede', and 'concede'. The spelling trap lives in the middle: a doubled c followed by a doubled s (cc then ss), which is easy to under-count when writing quickly.

How the word is built

• success (from Latin successus: an outcome, advance)
• -ful (full of, characterised by)