A title of honor or respect used for high-ranking officials like ambassadors or governors; the quality of being excellent.
From Latin 'excellentia' meaning superiority or excellence, from 'excellens' meaning surpassing. The formal title sense developed in the 16th-17th centuries for addressing dignitaries.
Your Excellency' is a title now usually reserved for ambassadors and governors, but it originally just meant 'you excellent person'—it's a beautiful linguistic fossil showing how languages create formal distance by exaggerating everyday compliments into official titles.
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