percentage
per·cent·age/pə(ɹ)ˈsɛntɪd͡ʒ/noun
percentage is spelled P-E-R-C-E-N-T-A-G-E, 3 syllables: per·cent·age. The wrong spelling people search most is precentage: about 100 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 35 of all searches for the word. Percentage is a noun meaning “The amount, number or rate of something, regarded as part of a total of 100; a part of a whole”. The plural of percentage is percentages.
How many letters and syllables are in percentage?
| Letters | 10: P-E-R-C-E-N-T-A-G-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: per·cent·age |
| In writing | 30 times per million words; the 3,114th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, precentage, about 100 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell percentage?
Percentage is spelled P-E-R-C-E-N-T-A-G-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 35 of the searches for percentage in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is percentage?
Percentage appears 30 times per million words in written English, the 3,114th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce percentage?
- /pə(ɹ)ˈsɛntɪd͡ʒ/
- /ˈpɚsɛnt(e)ɪd͡ʒ/
Percentage has 3 syllables, split per·cent·age in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-percentage.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of percentage
- percentages plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does percentage mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The amount, number or rate of something, regarded as part of a total of 100; a part of a whole.
A high percentage of secondary school leavers take a gap year.
- 2
A share of the sales, profits, gross margin or similar.
She gets a percentage for every vacuum cleaner sold.
- 3
informalBenefit or advantage.
There was no percentage in staying at home.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Percentage in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | pourcentage |
| German | Prozentsatz, Hundertsatz, Vomhundertsatz , prozentualer Anteil, Hundertteil, Hundertanteil |
| Portuguese | percentagem, porcentagem |
| Spanish | porcentaje |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does percentage come from?
From percent, from Latin per centum (“for every hundred”), + -age (suffix indicating a rate).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).