English Online Dictionary. What means majority? What does majority mean?
English
Etymology
From Middle French maiorité, from Medieval Latin māiōritātem, accusative of Latin māiōritās, from Latin māiōr (“greater”).
Morphologically major + -ity
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /məˈd͡ʒɒɹɪti/
- (US) IPA(key): /məˈd͡ʒɑɹɪti/, /məˈd͡ʒɔɹɪti/
- Rhymes: -ɒɹɪti
Noun
majority (countable and uncountable, plural majorities)
- More than half (50%) of some group.
- Antonym: minority
- Hyponyms: absolute majority, double majority, qualified majority, silent majority, simple majority, supermajority
- Coordinate term: plurality
- 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.
- (dated) Legal adulthood, age of majority.
- (UK) The office held by a member of the armed forces in the rank of major.
- Ancestors; ancestry.
Usage notes
- Not to be confused with a plurality, i.e. the greatest share of a total (which may be less than half).
- In cases of votes, the terms simple majority or relative majority are used to explicitly clarify a motion needs more votes in support of a proposal than against it; whereas the term absolute majority refers to more than half of all votes cast, including blanks and abstentions.
Derived terms
Related terms
Collocations
Translations
See also
See also
- Thesaurus:quantifier
Further reading
- “majority”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- “majority”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “majority”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
- majority in Britannica Dictionary