Ruling
Ruling adjective - Held by or applicable to a majority of the people.
Successful and ruling are semantically related. In some cases you can use "Successful" instead an adjective "Ruling".
Successful
Successful adjective - Having attained a desired end or state of good fortune.
Ruling and successful are semantically related. Sometimes you can use "Ruling" instead an adjective "Successful".
Both words in one sentence
- A Fantasy and Historical Fiction trope, where the first thing that follows a successful invasion or government overthrow is a thorough massacre of the target land's current ruling family, be it Royal Blood or just a noble house of whatever.
Source: Ruling Family Massacre -
The very concept of the mandate of heaven is based around the concept; the thinking was that if no successful rebellion would be possible unless heaven revoked its mandate from the ruling dynasty.
Source: The Cycle of Empires - The Larry Niven short story "Convergent Series" deconstructs the Deal With The Devil by not only giving a purported reason why demon-summoning rarely works (and why you wouldn't hear about the successful cases), but also by ruling out each of the usual ways out of the deal one by one.
Source: Deal With The Devil / Literature
Cite this Source
Successful and Ruling. (2016). Retrieved 2026, August 07, from https://thesaurus.plus/related/ruling/successful
Ruling & Successful. N.p., 2016. Web. 07 Aug. 2026. <https://thesaurus.plus/related/ruling/successful>.
Successful or Ruling. 2016. Accessed August 07, 2026. https://thesaurus.plus/related/ruling/successful.
Google Ngram Viewer shows how "ruling" and "successful" have occurred on timeline