What is the difference between excellent and extraordinary?

Question

I know they sorta mean different thing. My real question is which one is higher up in terms of rating quality. For example, the game was excellent or the game was extraordinary. So you understand my question completely, average is better than mediocre, good is better than average. Which one is better between excellent and extraordinary? Don't say they're the same, because they are not synonyms.

Answer 1

Something excellent is very good, great, or high quality: this is one of the best compliments around.



Words like extraordinary and exceptional are similar in meaning to excellent. This is a strong word used mainly for things, people, and actions that are much better than average. A B+ on a test isn't bad, but an A is excellent. In basketball, making an all-star team is excellent. Being excellent is difficult and people tend to admire it. People use excellent in another, less specific way sometimes. If you want to say "Cool" or "Good" you might say "Excellent!"







Something extraordinary goes above and beyond what is expected. This can be good or bad. Saving a child from a burning building is an extraordinary act of heroism, but a test score of 11 out of 100 is extraordinary too.



The extra- in extraordinary means "outside" the ordinary. If you had to work for 10 hours on a two-page writing assignment, that means it was an extraordinarily hard assignment. Either that or you were extraordinarily slow. We often use the word extraordinary as a superlative. If your friend bakes you a cake better than any you’ve ever tasted, you could tell her it is “extraordinary.”

Answer 2

The main difference is that the word 'excellent' has positive connotations. Extraordinary can certainly be used positively but can also be used to describe things that are pretty strange or unusual.



If I was to use one of the words to describe the quality of something, I'd use extraordinary. 'The team were excellent' just, to me, means that they were well above average, very good. If I said 'the team were extraordinary', I'd take that to mean that they performed in a way that was not only incredible but broke the boundaries of what had previously been achieved before. Hope that helped

Answer 3

Excellent is a rating... like nearly perfect. Extraordinary usually means excellent too, but it implies a rarity... the Extra (out of) and Ordinary.Better than excellent would be fantastic.

Answer 4

Excellent is as good as it usually gets but extraordinary is beyond that ....just short of amazing !