Other forms: successes
Success is reaching the goal you worked towards. Great success, without success, the success of the campaign.
It is uncountable for the abstract idea and countable for a particular achievement: the show was a success, three successes in a row. The adjective is successful and the verb succeed, which has a second meaning worth knowing — to succeed somebody is to take their place, which is where succession and successor come from. Note that with success and without success are both standard, and that success rate is the usual way of measuring it.
1nounsuccessThe achieving of what you set out to do.
“The campaign was a success by every measure they set.”
synonyms: achievement, triumph
2nounwellSomebody or something that does well.
“The shop was an unexpected success.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
success is an achieving of aims.
Latin successus is a coming after, from succedere — sub-, under or close after, plus cedere, to go. Success originally meant simply an outcome, of any kind, and English narrowed it to the good ones. The neutral sense survives in succeed meaning to follow.
Latin
successus
English, today
success
Built from
Learned borrowing from Latin successus. Latin successus, from succēdō (“succeed”), from sub- (“next to”) + cēdō (“go, move”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA