Meaning of average in English

average

noun

/ˈæv.ər.ɪdʒ/ us

/ˈæv.ɚ.ɪdʒ/

average noun (AMOUNT)

the result you get by adding two or more amounts together and dividing the total by the number of amounts:

The average of the three numbers 7, 12, and 20 is 13, because the total of 7, 12, and 20 is 39, and 39 divided by 3 is 13.

average of Prices have risen by an average of four percent over the past year.

on average My income's rather variable, but I earn £175 a day on average.

[ C or U ]

in cricket, the average number of runs scored by a batter in each innings, or the average number of runs scored from a bowler for each time they end a batter's turn to hit the ball:

With two centuries in the season, she had the best average of all the players on the team.

The spinner has a relatively high average but took a lot of wickets.

[ C or U ]

in baseball, a number that shows how good a player is at hitting the ball, that is calculated by dividing the number of times the player hit the ball by the number of times they have been at bat:

He has raised his average and home run totals every year.

With an average of .280, he's one of the most reliable hitters on the team.

More examplesFewer examples

Countywide, exam results have improved by an average of eight percent.
Rates of pay are above average.
The number of spectators at football matches was lower than average last season.
The number of soldiers killed this week is much higher than the weekly average.
On average, I earn about one and a half thousand pounds a month.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Averages

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Cricket

Baseball & rounders

average noun (USUAL STANDARD)

B1 [ S or U ]

a standard or level that is considered to be typical or usual:

The audience figures were lower than average for this sort of film.

the average In western Europe, a seven to eight-hour working day is about the average.

on average On average, people who don't smoke are healthier than people who do.

below average The quality of candidates was well below average.

above average The quality of the wedding cake was well above average.

an average of I expect to spend an average of $50 to $60 on a meal in a restaurant.

More examplesFewer examples

His marks in English have been below average for some time now.
Tickets for such events will cost around $30 on average.
On average, people seem to go away on holiday twice a year.
I'm afraid his latest piece of work was well below average.
This chocolate cake is superb - much better that the average.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Plain and ordinary

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average

verb [ T ]

/ˈæv.ər.ɪdʒ/ us

/ˈæv.ɚ.ɪdʒ/

to reach a particular amount as an average:

Enquiries to our office average 1,000 calls a month.

Many doctors average (= work an average of) 70 hours a week.

Trainee accountants average (= earn an average of) £32,000 per year.

More examplesFewer examples

He averaged 14 strikeouts per game last season.
Ticket prices for the concert average at $45.
Towards the end of the season, the team averaged three goals a game.
The show averages a weekly audience of eight million.
Hotels in the region are expensive, averaging £100 a night.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Averages

Phrasal verbs

average something out
average out
average out at something

average

adjective

/ˈæv.ər.ɪdʒ/ us

/ˈæv.ɚ.ɪdʒ/

average adjective (AMOUNT)

B1 [ before noun ]

An average number is the number you get by adding two or more amounts together and dividing the total by the number of amounts:

average earnings average earnings

average income average income

average rainfall average rainfall

average age The average age of the US soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War was 19.

More examplesFewer examples

The average temperature worldwide has risen by about one degree Fahrenheit in the past 100 years.
The average cost of a new house has gone up by 5% to £76,500.
The average human lifespan in the developed countries has increased over the last hundred years.
The average annual rainfall in this region: 750 mm.
There will be an increase in tax for those earning in excess of twice the national average wage.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Medium-sized

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Averages

average adjective (USUAL)

typical and usual:

The average person on the street is a lot better off than they were 40 years ago.

a student of average ability

The food was fairly average (= not excellent, although not bad).

Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

good enough but not excellent

acceptableYour essay was acceptable, but I think you could have done better.
reasonableThey have a reasonable chance of winning.
adequateThe law provides adequate compensation for robbery victims.
passableI speak passable Spanish.
will doIt's not perfect, but it'll do.

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Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples

being part of normal life and not special

ordinaryHe took ordinary household objects and transformed them into pieces of art.
everydayComputers are now just a part of everyday life.
quotidianWe longed for the quotidian rituals, like shopping and tea, that the end of the war would bring.
day-to-dayDay-to-day operations of the team would be handled by the assistant coach.
dailyI'm looking for a good daily shampoo that won't damage my hair.

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SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Quite good, or not very good

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Standard and routine

Related word

averagely

Idiom

the/your average bear

(Definition of average from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

average | American Dictionary

average

noun

/ˈæv·rɪdʒ, -ər·ɪdʒ/

average noun (USUAL STANDARD)

Add to word list Add to word list

[ U ]

a standard or level that is considered to be typical or usual:

The quality of her work is well above average.

average noun (AMOUNT)

[ C ] mathematics

the result obtained by adding two or more amounts together and dividing the total by the number of amounts, or by another total:

I’m 35 and my brothers are 32 and 26, so the average of our ages is 31.

In his third season on the team, he raised his batting average to .270.

Interest rates rose on average to 10.05% in January.

Idiom

on average

(Definition of average from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

average | Business English

average

noun

/ˈævərɪdʒ/ us

(written abbreviation av, written abbreviation av., written abbreviation ave)

Add to word list Add to word list

[ C ]

the result that you get by adding two or more amounts together and dividing this total by the number of amounts:

daily/monthly/quarterly average Trading was 297 million shares, down from the three-month daily average of 313 million shares.

The state's unemployment rate remained well below the national average of 5.7 percent.

an average of Its economy has grown at an annual average of 3.6% for the past seven years.

Regulators are careful to stress that the performance figures are only averages - some companies performed better.

Compare

mean
median
mode

[ C or U ]

a level or standard that is considered to be typical for a particular place, group of people, type of business, etc.:

above/below (the) average Our companies' profitability is above the sector average.

Most of these businesses match industry averages in job creation.

[ U ] INSURANCE

→ partial loss

STOCK MARKET

an average that is based on a particular group of companies' shares, which is used to represent changes in the stock market or to show which types of businesses are getting the most investors:

the industrial average

on average

typically or usually:

On average, only about half of the consumers who qualify for a rebate actually collect it.

Phrasal verb

average out

(Definition of average from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of average

average

Moreover, the risk estimates and difference scores were separately averaged across the 14 pleasant and the 18 aversive events.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

At some level, this averaging requires a memory for past events that lasts at least several minutes.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Environmental data were averaged for five crop development stages.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Means are shown as 5-year moving averages.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The results for the single selection environments were averaged.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Final totals and averages are taken in each column cells without an asterisk!.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Results of the four individual plants were averaged.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Egg survival averaged 99.5%, and survival to adulthood from the pupal stage was 100% regardless of host plant (excluding chilli) (fig. 3).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The removed reaction times were replaced by the corresponding condition averages for the participant.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Heterozygosities averaged over loci exceeded 50% in all populations.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, the overall scores when averaged out as a class showed an increase in each of the four categories.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In the absence of interactions involving the sentence factor, the standard procedure has been to conduct analyses of ratings averaged across test sentences.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Figure 1 summarizes the averages (and standard deviations) of the gesture rate by language, for both iconic and noniconic gestures.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Tables 2 and 3 list the accuracy means for each condition, averaged across five independent simulations.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Between the atoms the interaction becomes the free energy of the representative atoms, averaging over the motion of the constituent atoms of each element.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of average?

Translations of average

in Chinese (Traditional)

數量, 平均數, 平均…

Meaning of average in English

average noun (AMOUNT)

average noun (USUAL STANDARD)

Phrasal verbs

average adjective (AMOUNT)

average adjective (USUAL)

Related word

Idiom

average | American Dictionary

average noun (USUAL STANDARD)

average noun (AMOUNT)

Idiom

average | Business English

See also

Phrasal verb

Examples of average

Translations of average

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