percent

Adverb

percent (not comparable)

1. (US) For every hundred (used with preceding numeral to form a noun phrase expressing a proportion).
   • 10 percent off all swimwear this week!
   • Diane Watson has had a distinguished career in education and politics, and last year was elected to the House of Representatives, winning 75 percent of the vote in her Congressional district.2002 May 8, Leon Jaroff, Time

Noun

percent (plural percent or percents)

1. A percentage, a proportion (especially per hundred).
   • only a small percent attain the top ranks
2. One part per hundred; one percent, hundredth.
   • And from 1966, under Regulation Q, there was a ceiling of 5.5 per cent on their deposit rates, a quarter of a per cent more than banks were allowed to pay.2008, Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, Penguin, page 254
3. The percent sign, %.
4. An annuity or security with a certain fixed and guaranteed annual percentage rate of return or percentage dividend.
   • […]Several stocks in the Three Per Cents and Three Per Cents Reduced to be transferred into the name and to the credit of the prosecutor, without any authority to him (the traverser) to sell, negotiate, transfer or pledge the said 9000l. Three-and-a-Quarter per Cent. Annuities.1848, Edward W. Cox, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister at Law, editor, Reports of Cases in Criminal Law Argued and Determined in All the Courts of England and Ireland: Volume II 1868 to 1848...
   • Why, from the pleasant and businesslike manner in which the transaction is carried out, it might be a large purchase in the three per cents. Yet what a piece of work a man makes of his first "pop."1886, Jerome K. Jerome, “On Being Hard Up”, in Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Prepositional phrase

1. Per hundred.
   • By how many percent did the cancer survival rate for breast cancer increase by 2008?2014, Alan Tussy, Diane Koenig, Basic Mathematics for College Students with Early Integers, →ISBN, page 637