pivot
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈpɪv.ɪt/
ipa: /ˈpɪv.ət/
rhymes: -ɪvɪt
rhymes: -ɪvət
Forms: form: pivots
Etymology: From Middle English pevet, *pivot, from Old French pivot (“hinge pin, pivot”) (12th c.), possibly from Latin pūgiō.
Senses: examples: text: The weight of the body and the traction and braking forces are taken by the conventional dished bogie centre pivot with phosphor-bronze liner; this type of centre pivot facilitates passage over marshalling yard humps.
ref: 1962 December, “The B.R. standard diesel-electric Type 1 locomotive”, in Modern Railways, page 382:
glosses: 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.
examples: text: “The story of this adoption is, of course, the pivot round which all the circumstances of the mysterious tragedy revolved. Mrs. Yule had an only son, namely, William, to whom she was passionately attached ; but, like many a fond mother, she had the desire of mapping out that son's future entirely according to her own ideas.[…]”
ref: 1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020:
glosses: Something or someone having a paramount significance in a certain situation.
examples: text: Sandy Weill was the man who stitched Citigroup together in the 1990s and in the process helped bury the Glass-Steagall act, a Depression-era law separating retail and investment banking. Last month he performed a perfect pivot: he now wants regulators to undo his previous work.
ref: 2012 August 18, “Banking reform: Sticking together”, in The Economist, issue:
glosses: Act of turning on one foot.
topics: government
military
politics
war
glosses: The officer or soldier who simply turns in his place while the company or line moves around him in wheeling.
qualifier: roller derby
glosses: A player with responsibility for co-ordinating their team in a particular jam.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
programming
sciences
glosses: 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.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A pivot table.
topics: computing
engineering
graphical-user-interface
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: Any of a row of captioned elements used to navigate to subpages, rather like tabs.
topics: mathematics
sciences
glosses: 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.
topics: mathematics
sciences
statistics
glosses: A pivotal quantity.
topics: ball-games
football
games
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: A quarterback.
topics: ball-games
games
handball
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: A circle runner.
topics: government
politics
glosses: 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.
Derived terms: emotional pivot
pivot bridge
pivot gearing
pivot gun
pivotless
pivotlike
pivot man
pivot operation
pivot pin
pivot point
pivot tooth
Related terms: fulcrum
pivotal