Center

How to spell center

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce center

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does center mean?

1. nounThe middle point or part of something, or a place where a particular activity is concentrated.
2. verbTo place something in the middle, or to focus an effort or discussion on a particular thing.

Center in a sentence

• noun

  The new shopping center opens downtown next month.

• verb

  Please center the heading on the page before printing.

• noun

  A small table stood in the center of the room.

• verb

  The report will center on rising fuel costs.

Where does center come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek kentron, which named the sharp point of a compass or a goad used to prick cattle, from the verb kentein meaning 'to prick' or 'to pierce'. Geometers used kentron for the fixed point of a pair of compasses around which a circle is drawn, and that gave rise to the idea of the exact middle of a circle. Latin borrowed the word as centrum, and it passed into English through Old French in the 1300s, at first as a strictly mathematical term before broadening to mean any central point or place. The spelling split is the famous trap here: the form ends in -re in Britain and Canada (centre) but was settled as -er in the United States, largely through Noah Webster's nineteenth-century push to make American spellings match their pronunciation. The same Greek root still shows up in 'concentrate' and 'eccentric', both of which lean on that original idea of a single middle point.

How the word is built

• centr- (middle point, from Latin centrum)
• -er (American noun/verb ending, reversing the British -re)

British and American spelling

Center is the American spelling. British English spells it centre.