diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst
index 53581420f920f..2bccaa1a4e322 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.0.0.rst
@@ -1297,6 +1297,7 @@ I/O
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.to_dict` not converting ``NA`` to ``None`` (:issue:`50795`)
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.to_json` where it would segfault when failing to encode a string (:issue:`50307`)
 - Bug in :func:`read_xml` where file-like objects failed when iterparse is used (:issue:`50641`)
+- Bug in :func:`read_excel` where passing invalid argument name ``headers`` to :meth:`parse` doesn't raise error (:issue:`50953`)
 
 Period
 ^^^^^^
diff --git a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
index 79d174db5c0a7..074b1cf554680 100644
--- a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
+++ b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
@@ -1539,13 +1539,16 @@ def parse(
         skiprows: Sequence[int] | int | Callable[[int], object] | None = None,
         nrows: int | None = None,
         na_values=None,
+        keep_default_na: bool = True,
+        na_filter: bool = True,
+        verbose: bool = False,							 					   							  
         parse_dates: list | dict | bool = False,
         date_parser: Callable | None = None,
         thousands: str | None = None,
         comment: str | None = None,
+        decimal: str = ".",				   
         skipfooter: int = 0,
         use_nullable_dtypes: bool = False,
-        **kwds,
     ) -> DataFrame | dict[str, DataFrame] | dict[int, DataFrame]:
         """
         Parse specified sheet(s) into a DataFrame.
@@ -1571,13 +1574,16 @@ def parse(
             skiprows=skiprows,
             nrows=nrows,
             na_values=na_values,
+            keep_default_na=keep_default_na,
+            na_filter=na_filter,
+            verbose=verbose,				
             parse_dates=parse_dates,
             date_parser=date_parser,
             thousands=thousands,
+            decimal=decimal,				
             comment=comment,
             skipfooter=skipfooter,
             use_nullable_dtypes=use_nullable_dtypes,
-            **kwds,
         )
 
     @property