percent

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See also: per cent and per cent.

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From New Latin per centum (“by the hundred”).

Pronunciation

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  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛnt

Adverb

percent (not comparable)

  1. For every hundred (used with preceding numeral to form a noun phrase expressing a proportion). [from 16th c.]
    • 2002, Leon Jaroff, Time, 8 May:
      Diane Watson has had a distinguished career in education and politics, and last year was elected to the House of Representatives, winning 75 percent of the vote in her Congressional district.
    • 2016, Arthur Neslen, The Guardian, 7 July:
      Twelve percent of the world’s population now relies directly or indirectly on the fisheries industry.

Usage notes

  • A percentage is often denoted by the character %.
    50% denotes 50 percent.
  • The difference of two percentages is measured by percentage point, not by percent.

Derived terms

Noun

percent (plural percent or percents)

  1. A percentage, a proportion (especially per hundred).
    only a small percent attain the top ranks
  2. One part per hundred; one percent. [from 19th c.]
    • 2008, Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, Penguin 2008, p. 254:
      And from 1966, under Regulation Q, there was a ceiling of 5.5 per cent on their deposit rates, a quarter of a per cent more than banks were allowed to pay.

Translations

Prepositional phrase

percent

  1. Per hundred.
    • 2014, Alan Tussy, Diane Koenig, Basic Mathematics for College Students with Early Integers (→ISBN), page 637:
      By how many percent did the cancer survival rate for breast cancer increase by 2008?

Usage notes

  • Percent/per cent originated as a shortening of the Latin phrase per centum, “per hundred”, and historically the use of the word as a noun (as in “half a percent” or “percents”) was regarded as an error,[1] though such use has now become so common that it is recognized by all other major dictionaries,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] and a few treat the word as being only a noun.[8] Of those which recognize non-nounal uses, most label it an adverb[2][3][4][5][6] and many also label it an adjective[2][3][4][7] though it does not meet tests of adjectivity.

See also

Typography

References

  1. ^ Various older pedagogic works, e.g. Charles Harvey Raymond's Essentials of English composition (1923), page 461, prescribe: "Per cent is an adverb meaning in the hundred. [...] Percentage is a noun meaning rate per cent."
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 “percent”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 “percent”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 “percent”, in Collins English Dictionary.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 “percent”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 “percent”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 “percent”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 “percent” (US) / “percent” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.

French

Verb

percent

  1. third-person plural present indicative of percer
  2. third-person plural present subjunctive of percer

Hungarian

Etymology

percen +‎ -t

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): [ˈpɛrt͡sɛnt]
  • Hyphenation: per‧cent

Verb

percent

  1. third-person singular indicative past indefinite of percen
  2. (deprecated template usage) past participle of percen
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