- The definition of a cent is a unit of money equal to 1/100th of a dollar in the United States.
An example of a cent is one penny.
A United States penny equal to one cent.
- a monetary unit of the U.S., equal to of a dollar; penny: symbol, ¢
- a coin of this value, made of an alloy of copper and zinc or tin; penny
- a monetary unit of various other countries, equal to of the basic unit
Origin of centMiddle English and amp; Old French ; from Classical Latin centum, hundred
Origin of centMiddle English, from Old French, hundred, from Latin centum; see dek&mlowring; in Indo-European roots. Our Living Language The plural of cent is cent in some varieties of vernacular Southern English when preceded by a numeral: That costs eighty cent. See Note at foot.
- Latin centum (hundred)
(plural cents or cent)
- (money) A subunit of currency equal to one-hundredth of the main unit of currency in many countries. Symbol: ¢.
- (informal) A small sum of money.
- He blew every last cent.
- (money) A subunit of currency equal to one-hundredth of the euro.
- (money) A coin having face value of one cent (in either of the above senses).
- (music) A hundredth of a half step.
- Due to the differing plural formats used in European languages, it is common to use the word cent as a plural throughout the Eurozone.
- (law) Abbreviation of central.
This is the customary abbreviation of this term as used in case citations. See, e.g., The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, Nineteenth Edition (2010), "Case Names and Institutional Authors in Citations", Table T6, p. 430-431.
- Variant of centi-