percentage

[per-sen-tij]

noun

1. a rate or proportion per hundred.

2. an allowance, commission, or rate of interest calculated by percent.

3. a proportion in general.

   Only a small percentage of the class will graduate with honors.

4. gain; benefit; profit; advantage.

percentage

/ pəˈsɛntɪdʒ /

noun

1. proportion or rate per hundred parts

2. commerce the interest, tax, commission, or allowance on a hundred items

3. any proportion in relation to the whole

4. informal,  profit or advantage

Confusables Note

See percent.

Other Word Forms

• percentaged adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of percentage¹

First recorded in 1780–90; percent + -age

Example Sentences

The Fed cut short-term rates by a quarter of a percentage point last month to 4% to 4.25%, and the market expects it to cut twice more this year.

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And the jobless rate, while steady last month, has risen half a percentage point since the start of the year and remains at its highest level since 2016, outside the peak during pandemic lockdowns.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Some 83% of consumers who requested a lower interest rate on a credit card were granted one, shedding an average of 6.7 percentage points, according to a May survey from LendingTree.

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How much money are you giving away—or what percentage are you planning to give away?

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The silver market is also significantly smaller, meaning fluctuations in the U.S. dollar tend to have a more pronounced effect on prices on a percentage basis.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• bonus 
• chunk 
• fee 
• interest 
• percent 
• proportion 
• rate 
• ratio 
• royalty 

When To Use

What is a percentage?

Percentage is a rate or proportion per hundred, as in This graph shows the percentage of homes that have a microwave.Percentage is also used more generally to mean any proportion, as in Studies have shown that a large percentage of people love cute animals.A percent is one one-hundredth (1/100) of something. Percentage refers to the rate or proportion of that one hundred. Usually, you will see the word percentage used in math equations or statistics or when someone is measuring the increase and decrease in rates.Informally, percentage can mean a gain or advantage, as in There is no percentage to be gained from lying to the sheriff.Generally, percentage and percent can be used interchangeably when referring to vague proportions. However, the word percentage never follows an exact number. In this case, only percent can be used in The number of pet owners increased by 10 percent.A percentile is any of the possible 100 equal parts a range of values can be divided into. A given percentile means that the percentage of all possible outcomes is lower or lesser than the given percentile. For example, if you score in the 92nd percentile of an exam, you scored higher than 92 percent of all other people who took the exam.Example: After careful measuring, the percentage of people who hated pineapple on pizza was found to be significantly higher than first thought.