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

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the government is relying on the shocking percentages, without proper context, to advance a narrative.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

A year-end rally is something of a tradition–the S&P 500 rises 72% of the time in December, the highest percentage of any month.

Read more on Barron's

The percentage of S&P 500 stocks trading above their 200-day moving average fell to 47.31% on Nov. 20, the lowest level since June.

Read more on MarketWatch

Weakness in the real estate and residential services sectors helped drag the figure down 0.6 percentage points from October.

Read more on Barron's

Around the same percentage of respondents said they are concerned about a potential recession in the next six months.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

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.