majority
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /məˈd͡ʒɒ.ɹɪti/
ipa: /məˈd͡ʒɑ.ɹɪti/
ipa: /məˈd͡ʒɔɹ.ɪti/
note: Indic
ipa: /mɛˈdʒɔrɪʈi/
rhymes: -ɒɹɪti
Forms: form: majorities
Etymology: From Middle French maiorité, from Medieval Latin maiōritātem, accusative of Latin maiōritās, from Latin maior (“greater”). Morphologically major + -ity.
Senses: examples: text: The majority agreed that the new proposal was the best.
text: Those opposing the building plans were in the majority, so the building project was canceled.
text: The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.
ref: 1803, Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution:
text: But in 1912 the American people gave the Democrats another opportunity, and under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson we swept the country from sea to sea. At the end of that historic contest we had the Presidency, the Senate by a working majority, and the House by an overwhelming majority.
ref: 1920, Champ Clark, Democratic Achievement:
text: They and the airline itself described an internal process that requires multiple departments to manually redesign the airline’s schedule – a system that works “the vast majority of the time,” Southwest said in a statement.
ref: 2022 December 30, Gregory Wallace, “Insiders at Southwest reveal how the airline’s service imploded”, in CNN:
antonyms: minority
coordinate_terms: plurality
glosses: More than half (50%) of some group.
examples: text: The ruling party had a narrow three-seat majority in the legislature.
text: The winner with 53% had a 6% majority over the loser with 47%.
text: Now, there is talk of Democrats potentially being locked out of a Senate majority for a time to come because of trends in the electorate. […] This shouldn’t be surprising. As political analyst Sean Trende posited in the book “The Lost Majority,” history is filled with examples of majorities falling apart and the parties coming in and out of power.
ref: 2021 October 17, Harry Enten, “Why neither party has a sustainable political majority”, in CNN:
glosses: 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, or between the winning candidate and all of the other candidates combined.
examples: text: By the time I reached my majority, I had already been around the world twice.
glosses: Legal adulthood, age of majority.
examples: text: On receiving the news of his promotion, Charles Snodgrass said he was delighted to be entering his majority.
text: He was a captain before he went to the front, and following the Argonne battles he got his majority and the command of the divisional machine-guns.
ref: 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 8, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 150:
glosses: The office held by a member of the armed forces in the rank of major.
examples: text: Of evil parents an evil generation, a posterity not unlike their majority; of mischievous progenitors, a venomous and destructive progeny.
ref: 1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London: […] A[braham] Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], →OCLC:
glosses: Ancestors; ancestry.
Derived terms: absolute majority
antimajority
dictatorship of the majority
global majority
go over to the majority
hypermajority
join the majority
majoritarian
majoritize
majority decision
majority draw
majority government
majorityhood
majority leader
majority-minority
majority opinion
majority owner
majority problem
majority rule
nonmajority
sexual majority
simple majority
submajority
supermajority
supramajority
tyranny of the majority
vast majority
working majority
Related terms: major
most
quantifier