Other forms: decimals
A decimal is a number written with a point and digits after it. Two decimal places, a decimal point, convert to a decimal.
Each place after the point is a tenth of the one before, which is what makes the system base ten. Decimal places is how precision is quoted: to two decimal places. Britain went decimal in 1971, replacing pounds, shillings and pence with a hundred pence to the pound — a change older people still remember. Note that Americans use a point and much of Europe a comma.
1noundecimalA number written with a point and digits after it.
“Quoted to about two decimal places.”
2adjectivebasedBased on ten.
“The decimal system uses roughly ten symbols.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
decimal is a number system.
Medieval Latin decimalis comes from decem, ten. December, decade and dime come from the same ten, and December was once the tenth month.
Latin
decimus
Medieval Latin
decimalis
English, today
decimal
Built from
Borrowed from Latin -, Medieval Latin decimalis, from Latin decimus, from decem (“ten”) + adjective suffix -alis.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA