Central

How to spell central

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce central

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does central mean?

1. adjectiveLocated in or near the middle of something, or of primary importance.

Central in a sentence

• The hotel sits in a central location, just minutes from the station.

• Saving money for retirement was the central point of her financial plan.

Where does central come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin centralis, meaning 'belonging to the centre', which was built on centrum, the word for the midpoint of a circle. The Romans had themselves borrowed centrum from the Greek kentron, which originally described the sharp point of a compass, the spike around which a circle is drawn. From that geometric idea the sense broadened to mean the middle of anything, and the figurative sense of 'most important' followed naturally, since the middle is where things converge. English took central into use in the seventeenth century, alongside its close relatives 'centre' and 'concentrate'. The spelling keeps the Latin centr- root intact, which is why the tricky unstressed ending sounds like 'trull' but is written -tral.

How the word is built

• centr- (from centrum: midpoint, centre)
• -al (adjective suffix)