Definition of quintile
: any of the four values that divide the items of a frequency distribution into five classes with each containing one fifth of the total population; also : any one of the five classes
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Recent Examples of quintile from the Web
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Meanwhile, nearly one-quarter of households in the middle quintile of the income ladder would see their tax burdens increase.
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Their losses will come even as $700 billion worth of tax breaks also contained in the BCRA largely benefit the top quintile of earners, as an analysis from Howard Gleckman at the Tax Policy Center shows.
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Quintiles found that worldwide spending on cancer drugs and supportive medications — such as anti-nausea drugs and blood boosters — grew from $91 billion in 2012 to $113 billion in 2016.
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Those in the bottom income quintile, meanwhile, would see their taxes actually tick up by $10.
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Many of those under-savers are in the top two income quintiles and shouldn’t be government’s top priority.
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My VO2 max put me in the upper quintile of fitness for 50-year-old American males.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'quintile.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Breaking Down the Meaning of quintile
Many people have a deep interest in statistics about themselves, whether the information provided is about income, ice-cream consumption, or trash production. And any such rating can be divided into fifths, or quintiles. The fifth or lowest quintile would include the 20 percent of the population who make the least money or eat the least ice cream or generate the least trash, and the first quintile would include the 20 percent who make, eat, or generate the most.
Origin and Etymology of quintile
Latin quintus + English 2-ile
Financial Definition of QUINTILE
quintile
What It Is
A quintile is one of five equal parts.
How It Works
For example, if we were to look at all of the closing prices for Company XYZ stock for every day in the last year, the top 20% of those prices would represent the upper quintile of the data. The bottom 20% of those prices would represent the lower quintile of the data. There would be three quintiles in between the upper and lower quintiles. The average of all the stock prices typically falls right in the middle, between the second and fourth quintiles.
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