So THAT's Why Stan Lee Always Said 'Excelsior!'

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about why Kaos characters can’t stop saying “Veros.”

But Marvel fans will know that comic book legend Stan Lee had a favourite Latin word, too: he was renowned for saying “Excelsior.” 

He said it in cameos like his Avengers: Age Of Ultron appearance, not to mention at the end of every in-comic Stan’s Soapbox entry.

The word showed up as an Easter egg on a pair of Stan Lee-esque glasses in Guardian Of The Galaxy, and the Spider-Man: Miles Morales game engraved the phrase onto an in-game statue of Stan Lee too.

The comic book genius even named his autobiography Excelsior!: The Amazing Life Of Stan Lee.

Marvel, which is celebrating its 85th birthday this year, recently posted a supercut of their best movie moments on Instagram. 

It ended with Stan Lee saying: “Of course, I can’t leave without saying, ‘Excelsior!’”

But why does the word matter so much to him, and what does it mean?

It has to do with New York, DC rivalry, and spelling

The motto “Excelsior” – which means “higher” in Latin – has been taken to mean something like “onwards and upwards” by people like the founders of New York and American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

Stan Lee posted on X that it meant “upward and onward to greater glory” to him.

It became a part of New York’s coat of arms in 1778 and is still a part of their motto. 

Lee, who was born and raised in New York City, may have been influenced by that, his site reads.

But in a video posted on his official X account, now run by the owners of his likeness, name and signature (Stan Lee Universe and Kartoon Studios), Stan Lee said Marvel’s rivalry with DC Comics was part of the reason he chose the word.

“I used to write a column called Stan’s Soapbox in the comic book,” he said. 

“Over at DC Comics, they were copying the hell out of what we were doing,” he added. 

“I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to think of some expression that they won’t copy in DC’. So I thought of ‘Excelsior’.” 

In a different 2007 interview with Gizmodo, Lee recounted: “I said I’m going to get one expression that they’re not going to know what it means, and they won’t know how to spell it.”

According to Marvel, Stan Lee first started using “Excelsior” in a January 1986 edition of Stan’s Soapbox.

It’s far from his only phrase 

In his Gizmodo interview, Stan said, “I used to have a lot of expressions that I would end my comic book columns with: Hang Loose, Face Front, ’Nuff Said, and I found that the competition was always imitating them and using them.” 

So far as “Excelsior” goes, though, he says “they never did take up on it, thank goodness”. 

“It was not just a good idea,” he commented about his choice of catchphrase on X. “It was destiny.”