(especially BrE) (AmE usually percent) noun, adjective, adverb
noun (plural per cent, percent) one part in every hundred:
Poor families spend about 80 to 90 per cent of their income on food. * It is often stated that we use only 10 per cent of our brain. * What per cent of the population is / are overweight?
adjective, adverb by in or for every hundred:
a 15 per cent rise in price * House prices rose five per cent last year.
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GRAMMARPOINT
expressing percentages
Percentages (= numbers of per cent) are written in words as twenty-five per cent and in figures as 25%.
If a percentage is used with an uncountable or a singular noun the verb is generally singular: 90% of the land is cultivated.
If the noun is singular but represents a group of people, the verb is singular in AmE but in BrE it may be singular or plural: Eighty per cent of the work force is/are against the strike.
If the noun is plural, the verb is plural: 65% of children play computer games.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for per cent is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does per cent appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — per cent appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
