What does "decile" mean?

Any of the values in a series that divides the distribution of individuals in that series into ten groups of equal frequency.

What is a synonym for "decile"?

Common synonyms include: median.

//ˈdɛs.əl// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
Any of the values in a series that divides the distribution of individuals in that series into ten groups of equal frequency.
"Although few people scored high marks, everyone did quite well—the lowest decile was over 50%."
2
(statistics) any of nine points that divided a distribution of ranked scores into equal intervals where each interval contains one-tenth of the scores wordnet
3
Any one of the ten subsets or groups so divided.
"Our school is in the top decile for exam results."
4
An aspect or position of two planets when they are distant from each other a tenth part of the zodiac.

"Although few people scored high marks, everyone did quite well—the lowest decile was over 50%."

From Latin decilis, equivalent to dec- + -ile.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.