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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

pivot.

A thing on which something turns; specifically a metal pointed pin or short shaft in machinery, such as the end of an axle or spindle.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈpɪv.ɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɪv.ɪt/Australia, Canada, General-American, UK/ˈpɪv.ət/Australia, Canada, General-American, UK
  1. A thing on which something turns; specifically a metal pointed pin or short shaft in machinery, such as the end of an axle or spindle.

  2. Something or someone having a paramount significance in a certain situation.

    broadly · figuratively
  3. Act of turning on one foot.

  4. The officer or soldier who simply turns in his place while the company or line moves around him in wheeling.

  5. A player with responsibility for co-ordinating their team in a particular jam.

  6. An element of a set to be sorted that is chosen as a midpoint, so as to divide the other elements into two groups to be dealt with recursively.

  7. A pivot table.

  8. Any of a row of captioned elements used to navigate to subpages, rather like tabs.

  9. An element of a matrix that is used as a focus for row operations, such as dividing the row by the pivot, or adding multiples of the row to other rows making all other values in the pivot column 0.

  10. A pivotal quantity.

  11. A quarterback.

    Canadian
  12. A circle runner.

  13. A shift during a general election in a political candidate's messaging to reflect plans and values more moderate than those advocated during the primary.

    US
Where this word comes from

From Middle English pevet, *pivot, from Old French pivot (“hinge pin, pivot”) (12th c.), possibly from Latin pūgiō.

verb/ˈpɪv.ɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɪv.ɪt/Australia, Canada, General-American, UK/ˈpɪv.ət/Australia, Canada, General-American, UK
  1. To turn on an exact spot.

    intransitive
  2. To make a sudden or swift change in strategy, policy, etc. To change the direction of a business, usually in response to changes in the market.

    slang
  3. To make a sudden or swift change in strategy, policy, etc. To shift a political candidate's messaging during a general election to reflect plans and values more moderate than those advocated during the primary.

    US
Where this word comes from

From Middle English pevet, *pivot, from Old French pivot (“hinge pin, pivot”) (12th c.), possibly from Latin pūgiō.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.