Pivotal

How to spell pivotal

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce pivotal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pivotal mean?

1. adjectiveOf central importance, with everything else depending on or turning around it.

Pivotal in a sentence

• Her testimony proved pivotal to the outcome of the trial.

• The merger was a pivotal moment in the company's history.

Where does pivotal come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows out of the noun 'pivot', which English took from the French 'pivot', the name for the short pin or central point on which something turns, such as the spindle of a hinge or a turnstile. The French term itself is of uncertain earlier origin, though it may connect to Old French words for a hard point or peg, and possibly to an Italian root for a pin. English adopted 'pivot' in the 1600s for the physical pin, then extended it to mean a crucial central point on which a whole situation balances. The adjective 'pivotal' was coined in the early nineteenth century by adding the ordinary '-al' ending, and it almost always carries the figurative sense today: the moment, person, or decision that everything else turns around. Because the everyday word 'pivot' is so familiar, the spelling trap is mainly the unstressed middle and final vowels, which both sound like a faint 'uh' yet are written with 'o' and 'a'.

How the word is built

• pivot (a fixed pin or point on which something turns)
• -al (adjective suffix)