percentage
Americannoun
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percentages
plural
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a rate or proportion per hundred.
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an allowance, commission, or rate of interest calculated by percent.
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a proportion in general.
Only a small percentage of the class will graduate with honors.
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gain; benefit; profit; advantage.
noun
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proportion or rate per hundred parts
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commerce the interest, tax, commission, or allowance on a hundred items
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any proportion in relation to the whole
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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
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Perfect Ten: Dec, Cent, Mille
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The New SAT: The Language of the Test
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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:
"We don't yet have the full election result but it's obvious that we've lost a few percentage points compared with our result four years ago," party leader Jimmie Akesson said on election night.
From Barron's ● Sep. 14, 2026
The yield on the policy-sensitive 2-year Treasury declined 0.010 percentage point to 4.632%.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
Many online banks are paying upwards of 4% interest on these accounts, and there’s no doubt the yields handily beat the annual percentage yields typically offered at big banks.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 14, 2026
He saw a close race in 2022, then won by nearly seven percentage points in 2024, outperforming Trump.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2026
Bonds backed by floating-rate mortgages received higher ratings than bonds backed by fixed-rate ones—which was why the percentage of subprime mortgages with floating rates had risen, in the past five years, from 40 to 80.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
Likewise, double-check that percentages across all named beneficiaries add up to 100%, a common source of errors.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 10, 2026
Revenue and Ebitda are expected to rise by mid-teen percentages, while free cash flow should be aided by stable annual capital expenditure of about 50 billion ringgit, they say.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
But another time trial on stage 18 could give him the chance for victory when hot favourite and joint most successful Tour de France winner Pogacar, 27, could be riding for percentages.
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 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
Now I am ten, learning to embroider circular stitches, to calculate fractions into percentages, to nurse my papaya tree to bear many fruits.
From "Inside Out and Back Again" by Thanhha Lai
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.
