percentage

American  

[per-sen-tij] / pərˈsɛn tɪdʒ /

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.

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percentage British  

/ 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

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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

First recorded in 1780–90; percent + -age

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.

Example Sentences

Lufthansa is canceling 20,000 flights through October, and Delta Air Lines reduced its expected capacity by 3.5 percentage points.

From Barron's • Apr. 23, 2026

Instead, a clean-tech fund trounced a leading energy fund by 336 percentage points during his first term.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 23, 2026

That pushed load factor up by 0.7 percentage points to 81.3.

From MarketWatch • Apr. 23, 2026

ServiceNow’s annual percentage growth has settled in the low-20s range, for instance, down from a peak in the low-30s in 2021.

From Barron's • Apr. 23, 2026

A third advantage of the Fertile Crescent flora is that it includes a high percentage of hermaphroditic “selfers”—that is, plants that usually pollinate themselves but that are occasionally cross-pollinated.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

Related Words

• bonus
• chunk
• fee
• interest
• percent
• proportion
• rate
• ratio
• royalty