percentage
Americannoun
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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
- percentaged adjective
Etymology
Origin of percentage
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.
Log in to your respective payroll systems, click through to the deposit information tab, and select that you wish to choose multiple destinations for your pay — either by percentage or by fixed-dollar amount.
From MarketWatch
That would slash the average annual percentage rate roughly in half, a move meant to help consumers chip away at their debt burdens.
From MarketWatch
The percentage of white male veterans who said in a 2019 Pew study that they would advise a young family member to join the military was 81%.
“The paltry percentage of the total that these men will realize, especially in light of the hundreds of millions of dollars of professional fees that have resulted from this bankruptcy, is beyond tragic.”
“This is challenging for insurers, as a relatively high percentage of such storm losses is insured,” the report said.
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.
