central
/ˈsɛntɹ(ə)l/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: 5.12 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Being in the centre.
adj
Having or containing the centre of something.
adj
Exerting its action towards the peripheral organs.
adj
Belong or relating to the center of an algebraic structure.
adj
Belong or relating to the center of an algebraic structure.
name
A former local government region in central Scotland, created in 1975 mainly from Stirlingshire, abolished in 1996 and divided into 3 council areas: Clackmannanshire, Falkirk and Stirling (which were districts within the region).
Example Sentences
- "Egyption Thebes; / Tyre by the margin of the sounding waves; / Palmyra, central in the Desert, fell; / And the Arts died by which they had been raised."
- "The plantoid[…]will have a central stem containing a reservoir of liquid plastic of a sort that can be frozen by ultraviolet light. Half a dozen cylindrical roots will branch off this stem, and the plastic will flow through these from the reservoir to the tip. As in a real root, the tip will be a specialised structure."
- "The network had no central ownership or controller; and it did only one thing – transfer data packets from one edge of the network to their destination at another edge."
- "Cleverley was a central figure as England took the lead inside three minutes. He saw his shot handled by Moldovan defender Simion Bulgaru and Lampard drilled home the penalty in trademark fashion."
- "Passengers crowd in the main concourse at London Euston on January 28 2017, before boarding West Coast Main Line services. The urgent need to relieve congestion and improve reliability on the WCML remains central in the recently published Full Business Case for HS2."
- "The best places to find “siu sik” (“small eats” in Cantonese) are in the labyrinthine streets Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui. There is very little of this in sanitized Central."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱen-? Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-trom Proto-Indo-European *ḱéntrom Proto-Hellenic *kéntron Ancient Greek κέντρον (kéntron)bor. Latin centrum Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Proto-Indo-European *-is Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Latin centrālisbor. English central Borrowed from Latin centrālis, from centrum (“centre”), from Ancient Greek κέντρον (kéntron); by surface analysis, centre + -al.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *ḱent-, κέντρον
Usage
- American usage
Inflected Forms
more central (comparative)
most central (superlative)
centralmost (superlative)
centremost (UK, superlative)
centermost (US, superlative)
centrals (plural)
Derived Forms
Phrases
Australian Central Daylight Time
Australian Central Standard Time
Ballarat Central
Bundaberg Central
Canberra Central
central adiposity
Central African Federation
Central Africa Time