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
- The difference between the winning vote and the rest of the votes.
- (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
- Majority in the sense of "more than half" is used with countable nouns only; for example, "The majority of the members of the committee were in favour of the motion." While common in colloquial speech, it is often considered incorrect to use majority with uncountable nouns, as in "The majority of the time was wasted." In the latter case, it is preferable to use expressions such as "the larger part of", "most of", or "the bulk of" instead of "the majority of."
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