percentage
Americannoun
-
percentages
plural
-
a rate or proportion per hundred.
-
an allowance, commission, or rate of interest calculated by percent.
-
a proportion in general.
Only a small percentage of the class will graduate with honors.
-
gain; benefit; profit; advantage.
noun
-
proportion or rate per hundred parts
-
commerce the interest, tax, commission, or allowance on a hundred items
-
any proportion in relation to the whole
-
informal profit or advantage
Usage
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.
Commonly Confused
See percent.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of percentage
Explanation
A percentage is a portion of a whole expressed as a number between 0 and 100 rather than as a fraction. All of something is 100 percent, half of it is fifty percent, none of something is zero percent. To determine a percentage, you divide the portion of the whole by the whole itself and multiply by 100. So if you just ate two pieces of an eight-piece pie, and you want to know what percentage of the pie you consumed, you'd first divide 2 by 8 which equals .25. Then multiply .25 times 100 and get 25 percent. A percentage can also mean a portion of something but only when it has to do with numbers. When you buy furniture, the salesman gets a percentage of what you spend.
Vocabulary lists containing percentage
The SAT: Language of the Test, List 3
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
Perfect Ten: Dec, Cent, Mille
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
The New SAT: The Language of the Test
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Many tools publish percentage figures about their accuracy, but the figures are impossible to verify and do not take into account the risk of a false positive.
From Barron's ● Sep. 25, 2026
The Dodgers lost just five of 16 postseason games at home — a .688 winning percentage — en route to World Series titles the last two years.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
The yield on the 30-year bond rose 0.059 percentage point to 5.460%, its highest level in more than two decades.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 24, 2026
The increase in their combined net worth was lower than the S&P 500’s return in eight of the past 10 years, and cumulatively over the past decade it has lagged by 1.3 annualized percentage points.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 24, 2026
He asked the people most directly involved in the decision to sell credit default swaps on consumer loans what percentage of those loans were subprime mortgages.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
Those percentages add up to about 6,600 transgender or nonbinary students enrolled out of a total of 301,000.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026
To get annual figures, Bending Spoons said it averaged four quarterly percentages, a method that can smooth out big swings in churn, rather than dividing one full-year revenue number by another.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
In a few instances, it determined that single-digit percentages of my writing were either A.I.-generated or A.I.-assisted.
From Slate ● Aug. 18, 2026
This week she highlighted 10 areas in the U.S. with the highest percentages of home sellers asking for less than they paid for the properties.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 14, 2026
Lily says percentages and politicians can’t define identity, but they’ve defined mine: illegal lab creation.
From "The Adoration of Jenna Fox" by Mary E. Pearson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
