percent

See also: per cent and per cent.

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

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

Pronunciation
  • (UK) IPA(key): /pəˈsɛnt/
  • (US) IPA(key): /pɜɹ.sɛnt/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɛnt

Noun

percent (plural percent or percents)

  1. A part or other object per hundred.
    A candidate must receive at least half a percent of the votes in the first round to earn a spot on the ballot for the next round.
  2. A percentage, a proportion (especially per hundred).
    only a small percent attain the top ranks

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

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. “percent” in Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary.
  3. “percent” in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
  4. “percent” in the Collins English Dictionary, Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers.
  5. “percent” in the Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  6. “percent” (US) / “percent” (UK) in Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press.
  7. “percent” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
  8. “percent” (US) / “percent” (UK) in Macmillan 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. past participle of percen
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