majority

Noun

majority (countable and uncountable, plural majorities)

1. More than half (50%) of some group.
   • The majority agreed that the new proposal was the best.
   • Those opposing the building plans were in the majority, so the building project was canceled.

   Synonyms:

   absolute majority

   Antonyms:

   minority

2. (broadly, uncommon) Any share or fraction that is bigger than any one of its counterpart shares or fractions (of the same whole).
3. In a parliament or legislature, the difference in seats between the ruling party and the opposition; (UK) in an election, the difference in votes between the winning candidate and the second-place candidate, or between the winning candidate and all of the other candidates combined.
   • The ruling party had a narrow three-seat majority in the legislature.
   • The winner with 53% had a 6% majority over the loser with 47%.
4. (dated) Legal adulthood, age of majority.
   • By the time I reached my majority, I had already been around the world twice.
5. (UK) The office held by a member of the armed forces in the rank of major.
   • On receiving the news of his promotion, Charles Snodgrass said he was delighted to be entering his majority.
   • He was a captain before he went to the front, and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and the command of the divisional machine-guns.1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 8, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, page 150
6. Ancestors; ancestry.
   • Of evil parents an evil generation, a posterity not unlike their majority; of mischievous progenitors, a venomous and destructive progeny.1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC