central

Being in the centre.

Adjective

  1. Being in the centre.
    • 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. - 1814, William Wordsworth, “The Parsonage”, in The Poetical Works...
    • 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...
    • 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. - 2024 May 4, John Naughton, “The internet is in...
  2. Having or containing the centre of something.
  3. Being very important, or key to something.
    • 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. - 2012 September 7,...
    • 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...

    Synonyms: dominant main principal

  4. Exerting its action towards the peripheral organs.
  5. Belong or relating to the center of an algebraic structure.

    1. Of an element of an algebraic structure: which commutes with all other elements under multiplication

    2. Of a unital algebra over a field: whose center is exactly equal to the image of the base field

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱent-der. Ancient Greek κέντρον (kéntron)der. Latin centrum Proto-Indo-European *h₂el-der.? 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.

Forms

more central most central centralmost centremost centermost

Related

center

Derived

acentral anterocentral Australian Central Daylight Time Australian Central Standard Time Ballarat Central bicentral Bundaberg Central Canberra Central caudocentral central adiposity Central African Federation Central Africa Time Central American bushmaster Central Anatolia central angle central bank Central Bedfordshire Central Bohemian Region Central Bridge central business district central canal central casting central chimpanzee central city

Noun

  1. center

Forms

centrals