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percentile

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Etymology and origin of the English word percentile

Confidence
Established
Formation
Derivation
First attested
1885 F. Galton, Journal of the Anthropological Institute
Ultimate origin
English percent,-ile
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
English percent
English percentile
From the same root
English percentage ← percent

Pronunciation

  • /pəɹˈsɛn.taɪl/[1]
  • UK: /pəˈsɛn.taɪl/[1]
  • US: /pɚˈsɛn.taɪl/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English percent + -ile,[2][3][4][5] after quartile, decile and octile,[3] and, Merriam-Webster adds, probably sextile.[6][7] Etymonline credits the coinage to the English scientist Francis Galton.[2] The first part is short for Latin per centum (“by the hundred”).[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

In statistics, each of the values dividing a distribution into a hundred equal groups: 1885, in F. Galton's paper in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute.[3][2][6]

Semantic evolution

The adjective, "relating to or expressed in percentiles", followed in the same journal in 1886,[3] and Galton shortened the noun to centile in Nature in 1894.[3] The first edition of the OED (1905) gave a pronunciation with a short final vowel, /pəˈsɛntɪl/.[3] In everyday use the word mostly names the position of a score on a scale of a hundred, as in a test result in the 90th percentile.[6][8][9]

Timeline

  • 1885 – noun, in statistics, coined by Galton.[3][2][6]
  • 1886 – adjective, relating to percentiles.[3]
  • 1894 – shortened to centile.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (statistics) Each of the 99 values that divide a frequency distribution into a hundred groups of equal size; also called a centile.[9][6][3]
  2. Each of the hundred groups so formed.[4][3]
  3. A value on a scale of a hundred showing what percentage of a group scores at or below it: Her reading score was in the 85th percentile.[6][8]

Adjective

  1. Relating to or expressed in percentiles.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  6. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. (1961), Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam
  8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
  9. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
Cite this entry

“Percentile.” Etymologically, 2 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/percentile. Accessed 2 Nov. 2026.

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