PERCENTAGE / PERCENT/ %:
The basic meaning of percentage is “part of a whole”, where the whole is composed of 100 equal parts. Each of these parts is a percent.
A dollar is made of 100 cents. Each cent is one percent of a dollar.
A percentage tells you how much of the whole you have. In other words how many individual one-percent units you have of something.
If you have 50 pennies, you have 50 percent (50%) of a dollar. In other words you have ½ a dollar. If you have 25 pennies, you have 25 percent (25%) of a dollar. And so on.
To re-cap: you can take anything and divide it into 100 equal parts. Each part is a percent. How many of these one-percent parts you have, is what is called a percentage (how much of the whole you have).
Percent comes from Latin “per centum”, which means “per one hundred” (centum = one hundred).
Example:
One penny is 1 percent of a dollar. It takes 100 pennies to make one dollar.
