exclude
Americanverb (used with object)
-
excludes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
excluded,
past participle, past
-
excluding
present participle
-
to shut or keep out; prevent the entrance of.
- Antonyms:
- include
-
to shut out from consideration, privilege, etc..
Employees and their relatives were excluded from participation in the contest.
-
to expel and keep out; thrust out; eject.
He was excluded from the club for infractions of the rules.
- Synonyms:
- reject
verb
-
to keep out; prevent from entering
-
to reject or not consider; leave out
-
to expel forcibly; eject
-
to debar from school, either temporarily or permanently, as a form of punishment
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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excludernoun
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preexcludeverb (used with object)
-
excludableadjective
-
exclusoryadjective
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unexcludedadjective
-
unexcludingadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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excludesimple
-
excludessimple
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have excludedperfect
-
has excludedperfect
-
am excludingprogressive
-
are excludingprogressive
-
is excludingprogressive
-
have been excludingperfect progressive
-
has been excludingperfect progressive
Past
-
excludedsimple
-
had excludedperfect
-
was excludingprogressive
-
were excludingprogressive
-
had been excludingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of exclude
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Latin exclūdere “to shut out, cut off,” from ex- ex- 1 + -clūdere, combining form of claudere “to shut, close”
Compare meaning
How does exclude compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
Exclude means to leave out — like when the cool kids won't let you in on their game of four-square or the pizza guy leaves your neighborhood out from his delivery zone. Exclude comes to us from the Latin word excludere, which means "to shut." So essentially, when you exclude someone you slam the door in their face one way or another: You won't let them into the party, you leave them off the invite list, or refuse to include them in the conversation once they arrive. Needless to say, excluding others is not very nice.
Vocabulary lists containing exclude
Jim Burke's Academic Vocabulary List
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Case Closed: Clud, Clus
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UCPS 6th Grade Roots List #1
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
It said its charts would exclude songs that use AI "to generate the entirety or the primary portion of the creative elements".
From Barron's ● Aug. 25, 2026
One obvious blind spot is that it would exclude water facilities that serve fewer than 3,300 people, the communities least prepared, that indeed were among those likely targeted this time around.
From Slate ● Aug. 19, 2026
Street earnings exclude stock-based pay for at least 65 companies in the S&P 500, according to FactSet data.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Downing Street had earlier warned it would not be possible to exclude "one or two offenders" convicted of manslaughter from early release.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
During the last week of January the locks on the Intracoastal Waterway were closed to exclude the toxic waters from Matagorda Bay and divert them into the Gulf of Mexico.
From "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson
Statistics Canada’s wholesale measure excludes petroleum and oilseed and grain sales.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
It excludes individuals who earn $500,000 or more.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 21, 2026
Growth in regular earnings - which excludes bonuses - picked up slightly, although this was driven by a rise in public sector wages.
From BBC ● Aug. 18, 2026
Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 2.5 percent from a year ago.
From Barron's ● Aug. 12, 2026
The clay hypothesis hardly excludes life on Mars, but it certainly carries us far enough to say that there is no compelling evidence for microbiology on Mars.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
On Sunday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said anyone convicted of unlawful killing or allowing the death of a child would be excluded from the scheme.
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2026
Bloomberg News said it did not receive accreditation while the Times said its economic policy reporter was excluded.
From Barron's ● Aug. 31, 2026
Anyone who had already been diagnosed with heart failure or who had been prescribed other sleep medications was excluded.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 29, 2026
Yet the company excluded the majority of those harms from its public reports, designing its metrics so that many of the worst encounters were never captured.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 29, 2026
I had a feeling she would have been crushed to be excluded completely, and this gave her a way to stick around and still feel like she belonged.
From "Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie" by Jordan Sonnenblick
The ballroom is projected to cost more than $400 million, excluding the undisclosed cost of underground security upgrades.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 31, 2026
However, excluding nursery fee subsidies, underlying service inflation reached 2.3%, Morimoto estimates.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
High growth rates persist, even after excluding the sizable boosts to reported net income of several hyperscalers coming from markups to private investments in companies like Anthropic.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 25, 2026
Earlier this month, organisers announced they were excluding any country involved in an armed conflict from hosting the competition.
From Barron's ● Aug. 24, 2026
Drew followed, but Erin kept her back to him, excluding him from the conversation.
From "Here to Stay" by Sara Farizan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
