success
Americannoun
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successes
plural
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the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors; the accomplishment of one's goals.
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the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.
- Synonyms:
- triumph, accomplishment, achievement
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a performance or achievement that is marked by success, as by the attainment of honors.
The play was an instant success.
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a person or thing that has had success, as measured by attainment of goals, wealth, etc..
She was a great success on the talk show.
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Obsolete. outcome.
noun
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the favourable outcome of something attempted
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the attainment of wealth, fame, etc
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an action, performance, etc, that is characterized by success
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a person or thing that is successful
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obsolete any outcome
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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nonsuccessnoun
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presuccessnoun
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successlessnessnoun
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semisuccessadjective
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successlessadjective
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successlesslyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of success
First recorded in 1530–40; from Latin successus, equivalent to succēd-, stem of succēdere succeed + -tus suffix of verb action, with -dt- regularly becoming -ss-
Explanation
For some students, success in school means getting As and Bs. For others, it means getting straight As, starring in the school play, and winning the class election. Success means achieving a goal, and everyone's goals are different. We tend to think of success as a triumph or victory, but if you look at its linguistic roots in Latin, success literally just means "result." At some point several centuries ago people probably began using success as shorthand for "good success," and eventually they dropped the good altogether. That would explain why in formal settings you still occasionally hear the phrase "good success," even though we now think of all successes as good.
Vocabulary lists containing success
"Macbeth" Vocabulary from Act I
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Commonly Misspelled Words, List 5
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"Kids Are Inventors, Too"
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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:
For Mahony, it isn’t profit and loss that will determine DSI’s success, but the credibility it brings to Indonesia’s market.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026
That in turn would suggest that our odds of success in the stock market are no better than those of a coin flip.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 24, 2026
Off the global success of BTS, Hybe evolved from a mid-sized label into one of the biggest music and entertainment players in South Korea.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2026
Viral marketing has been a core part of Raising Cane’s success.
From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2026
And that’s how I feel about her success poem.
From "Keeping Pace" by Laurie Morrison
Recent successes have also flipped the narrative on Tehran’s investment in the axis and its effectiveness.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 18, 2026
China's Tianwen-1 mission already landed a rover named Zhurong on the surface of Mars in 2021, in one of the most spectacular successes of Beijing's space programme.
From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026
Ukrainian former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has credited the successes to Ukraine’s rapid technological advances.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
But to Chesney, it is how you respond to those successes and failures that prevail.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2026
It was the first of what would become a string of academic successes for the Warner children, in the classroom and in competitions outside of it.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
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.
