the.com/percent
Per hundred — because humans gave up counting past two hands long ago.
means A way of expressing a number as a fraction of 100, used for rates, proportions, and discounts.
from From Latin 'per centum,' meaning 'by the hundred' — 'per' (through/by) plus 'centum' (hundred, the same root giving us 'century' and 'cent'). Merchants and bankers in medieval and early modern Europe used 'per cento' in Italian trade and interest calculations, and the phrase traveled into English, eventually fusing into one word with its own symbol, %, whose two little circles are thought to descend from a scribal shorthand for 'cento' itself.
- origin
- latin per centum, meaning by the hundred
- symbol quirk
- the slashed zeros once meant per cento literally
- sneaky trick
- 100 percent off still means free, not negative
- finance abuse
- 110 percent effort is mathematically impossible, motivationally mandatory