proportionally

American  

[pruh-pawr-shuh-nuhl-ee] / prəˈpɔr ʃə nəl i /

adverb

1. in a way or to an extent that maintains proportion relative to something else.

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Explanation

Use the adverb proportionally when you're comparing the size or amount of one thing to another. If there’s a park on every block where you live, your town has proportionally more public parks than the average town of its size. The US Congress is proportionally representative, so states with more people get more representatives. In other words, each state gets a number of representatives that corresponds to its population. The adverb proportionally comes from its related adjective, proportional and noun proportion. Both words have a Latin root, proportionem, which means "comparative relation or analogy" and stems from the phrase pro portione, or "according to the relation of parts to each other."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

proportionally

Reports of nausea and other digestive complaints were proportionally less common.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 22, 2026

With lean teams, many small-caps can adopt AI tools quickly, automate workflows, and expand capacity without proportionally growing head count.

From Barron's ● Oct. 12, 2026

Amodei quickly climbed the ranks, helping lead key research into “scaling laws”—the notion that intelligence increases proportionally with the increase in computing power and data used to train it.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

Their mortgage payments were split proportionally to take into account their differing salaries, and the arrangements detailed in a declaration of trust so they would be protected when they came to sell.

From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026

The feat surely made Richard Parker the largest stowaway, proportionally speaking, in the history of navigation.

From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel

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