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Is weightage an English word?

We use it a lot in India, but I couldn't find it in my Oxford Dictionary.

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1 Answer 1

up vote 10 down vote accepted

I was able to find it in the Collins English Dictionary, which marks it as Indian:

weightage chiefly (Indian) another name for weighting

The British National Corpus has 259 cites for weighting, but not a single one for weightage.

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So, yes. It is an English word, but only an Indian English word. –  Colin Fine Nov 5 '10 at 16:25
it is used in the sense relative importance, as in "we dont give much weightage to looks" or "career has a higher weightage than marriage"... also see indianexpress.com/news/…, simplylearnt.com/topic-weightage/IIT-JEE, wordwebonline.com/en/WEIGHTAGE, so what could be the appropriate word to use in place of weightage. –  Kinjal Dixit Jul 19 '12 at 6:58
I get the feeling that weightage is an Indian coinage. Although useful, the question remains of just how many non-Indians would actually understand it. I think it’s better not to use it when addressing non-Indians. –  user38601 Mar 2 '13 at 16:40
@BinaryNights You should just use weight there. –  tchrist Mar 2 '13 at 17:28
The term is also known (and used) in Singapore. It is typically used in exam rubrics: 'this question has a weightage of 30%'. It would be formulated differently, say in BrE, where you might say, 'this question carries 30% of the marks'. –  Peter Jun 29 at 13:22

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