Centrist

How to spell centrist

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce centrist

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does centrist mean?

1. nounA person who holds moderate political views, positioned between the left and the right.
2. adjectiveRelating to or characteristic of moderate, middle-of-the-road politics.

Centrist in a sentence

• noun

  As a committed centrist, she rejected both the far left and the far right.

• adjective

  The candidate ran on a centrist platform that borrowed ideas from both sides.

• noun

  The party chose a centrist to broaden its appeal among undecided voters.

• adjective

  Their centrist economic policy aimed to balance free markets with public services.

Where does centrist come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Greek kentron, which literally meant a sharp point or the fixed spike of a compass used to draw a circle, and so came to mean the centre of that circle. Latin borrowed it as centrum with the sense of the middle point, and the idea of a central position passed into French. The political meaning grew out of the seating arrangement in the French revolutionary assemblies, where moderates sat in the middle between the radical left and the conservative right. From the French centriste, English adopted centrist in the nineteenth century to describe someone occupying that moderate middle ground. The spelling keeps the -centr- core seen in centre, central, and concentric, so remembering that shared root anchors the tricky unstressed second syllable.

How the word is built

• centr- (from centrum/kentron: the centre point)
• -ist (one who holds or advocates)