diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 77adf82..e42bb16 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -15,6 +15,9 @@
 - Issue #9797: pystate.c wrongly assumed that zero couldn't be a valid
   thread-local storage key.
 
+- Issue #9943: Improve the TypeError raised for passing too many positional
+  arguments.
+
 - Issue #4947: The write() method of sys.stdout and sys.stderr uses their
   encoding and errors attributes instead of using utf-8 in strict mode, to get
   the same behaviour than the print statement.
diff --git a/Python/ceval.c b/Python/ceval.c
index 673eac2..921cb48 100644
--- a/Python/ceval.c
+++ b/Python/ceval.c
@@ -3059,7 +3059,7 @@
                     defcount ? "at most" : "exactly",
                     co->co_argcount,
                     co->co_argcount == 1 ? "" : "s",
-                    argcount + kwcount);
+                    argcount);
                 goto fail;
             }
             n = co->co_argcount;