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.
The amount of Americans who are retired in their 60s has fallen by roughly 10 percentage points, to 32%, over the past 30 years.
From MarketWatch
If Bondi thought she could quiet the clamor for the Epstein files by releasing only a small percentage of heavily redacted documents, the move backfired.
From Salon
Over the 12 months after its publication, these two dozen stocks lagged behind the S&P 500 by 26 percentage points.
From Barron's
Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 1.2%, at 48711, in its largest one-week point and percentage gain since the week ending Nov. 28, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
From Barron's
Restaurant prices have increased by roughly 30% over the past five years, outpacing grocery prices by five percentage points.
From Barron's
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.
