Pivot

How to spell pivot

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pivot

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pivot mean?

1. nounA central pin, shaft, or point on which something turns or balances.
2. verbTo turn on a central point, or to change direction or strategy decisively.

Pivot in a sentence

• noun

  The gate swung freely on a single metal pivot.

• verb

  The dancer can pivot smoothly on one foot.

• noun

  The compass needle rests on a tiny pivot at its centre.

• verb

  The company decided to pivot from selling hardware to offering software.

Where does pivot come from?

Language of origin: French

Pivot came into English in the early 1600s straight from French, where pivot named the small pin or short spindle on which a hinge, a compass needle, or a gate turns. The deeper origin of the French word is genuinely uncertain, and scholars have linked it variously to old dialect words for a tooth or a point and even to the Italian piva, but none of these explanations is settled. In English it began as a concrete mechanical term for that central pin, then quickly grew a more abstract sense of any fixed point around which things revolve or balance. The verb, meaning to turn on such a point, followed in the 1800s, and in modern business and sport it has stretched again to mean a sudden, deliberate change of direction. The simple spelling rarely trips writers up, since it is just one vowel each side of the v, with no doubled letters and no silent ending.

How the word is built

• pivot (a whole word borrowed from French pivot: a pin or short shaft on which something turns); not formed from separable prefix or suffix in English