cent
noun
Simple meaning
A subunit of currency equal to one-hundredth of the main unit of currency in many countries.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sehntIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɛnt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
money
A subunit of currency equal to one-hundredth of the main unit of currency in many countries. Symbol: ¢.
money
A coin having face value of one cent (in either of the above senses).
money
A coin worth one-hundredth of the value of the basic unit
A centigrade scale for temperature having the freezing point of water defined as 0° and its boiling point defined as 100° at standard atmospheric pressure.
A period of one hundred consecutive years; often specifically a numbered period with conventional start and end dates, e.g., the twentieth century, which stretches from (strictly) 1901 through 2000, or (informally) 1900 through 1999. The first century AD was from 1 to 100.
money
A fractional monetary unit of several countries
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: (money) A subunit of currency equal to one-hundredth of the main unit of currency in many countries. Symbol: ¢.
Used this way, cent is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This sense is about measurement, so it is used where accuracy is the point.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
- Academic writing
Nearby words
- centime , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use cent
- “I found a shiny one-cent coin on the sidewalk this morning.”noun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.