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percent

adverb · noun

Simple meaning

Out of every hundred, written as %.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

persehnt

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

pɚˈsɛnt

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adverb

  1. For every hundred (used with preceding numeral to form a noun phrase expressing a proportion).

noun

  1. One part per hundred; one percent, hundredth.

  2. A proportion in relation to a whole (which is usually the amount per hundred)

  3. An annuity or security with a certain fixed and guaranteed annual percentage rate of return or percentage dividend.

  4. A percentage, a proportion (especially per hundred).

  5. The percent sign, %.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner (estimated)
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
General English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: For every hundred (used with preceding numeral to form a noun phrase expressing a proportion).

Used this way, percent is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a grammar or language-study use: it describes how language works, so it appears in teaching and reference writing.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Formal
Intensity
Moderate
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
No strong connotation
Usage feel
Formal and precise

Where it naturally appears

  • Academic writing
  • Education/classroom
  • Technical/specialist writing

Usage note

Comfortable in writing and prepared speech; in casual conversation a shorter everyday word usually sounds more natural.

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use percent

  • “Only ten percent of the surveyed people preferred the new design.”adverb

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

percent increase

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • percent signnounCompound term

    A sign (`%') used to indicate that the number preceding it should be understood as a proportion multiplied by 100.

  • ten percentnounCompound term

    A tenth part.

  • twenty-five percentnounCompound term

    One of four equal parts.

  • fifty percentnounCompound term

    A half expressed as a percentage.

  • twenty percentnounCompound term

    One part in five equal parts.

  • hundred-percenternounCompound term

    An extreme bellicose nationalist.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: one part per hundred

pct

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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.