Nexus

How to spell nexus

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce nexus

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does nexus mean?

1. nounA central link or focal point where connections, people, or activities converge.

Nexus in a sentence

• The city became the financial nexus of the entire region.

• That small office sits at the nexus of all our supply contracts.

Where does nexus come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from Latin, where nexus was the past participle of the verb nectere, meaning 'to bind, tie, or connect'. The literal sense was therefore 'a binding together', and in Roman law it even named a form of bondage in which a debtor pledged his own person as security. English adopted the word in the seventeenth century, keeping its Latin shape unchanged, and used it for a tie or connection between things. From there it broadened to mean a central point where many links converge, the focal hub of a network. The same nectere root survives in the modern words 'connect' and 'annex', and the 'x' in nexus simply preserves the Latin spelling where the 'c' of nectere fused with the ending.

How the word is built

• nex- (from Latin nectere: to bind, tie)
• -us (Latin noun ending)