centre
Pluralcentres
Verbcentres, centring, centred
US spellingcenter
Pluralcentres
Formscentres, centring, centred
- 1The part in the middle of something, at a good distance from its edges or sides.
The centre of the cake was still raw when we cut into it.
The ice in the centre of the pond was still thick enough to stand on.
UsageUsually in the centre of something: in the centre of the table. For a stretch of time, use middle: in the middle of the night.
Similarheart
- 2A place, often a building or group of buildings, given over to a particular purpose or activity.
The council plans to turn the old library into a community centre.
Shoppers packed the town's two retail centres on the first weekend of the sales.
UsageThe word for the activity comes first: shopping centre, leisure centre, community centre.
- 3The central district of a town or city, containing the bulk of its shops, offices and public services.
Several banks have left the centre for a business park on the ring road.
Our flat is a ten-minute walk from the centre, which makes Saturday shopping easy.
UsageUsually with the: the town centre, the city centre, go into the centre.
- 4To have something as the main subject or focus, or to make something the main focus of a plan, story or discussion; usually followed by on or around.
Talks between the two sides centre on the price of energy.
The novel centres on two sisters who inherit a failing farm.
UsageUsually centre on something, sometimes centre around. Some careful writers object to centre around; revolve around avoids it.
- 5A place that serves as the focus of a particular activity, where much of that activity is gathered.
In the nineteenth century Manchester grew into the main centre of the cotton trade.
London remains one of the world's leading financial centres.
UsageUsually a centre of or a centre for an activity: a centre of learning, a centre for car making.
- 6The exact middle of a shape or line: the point halfway along a line, or the point equally distant from every point on a circle or sphere.
Any straight line through the centre of a circle divides it into two equal halves.
Every radius runs from the centre of the sphere to its surface.
- 7To place an object so that it sits in the middle of an area.
Click this button to centre the text on the page.
Make sure the cake tin is centred on the oven shelf.
UsageUsually centre something on a page or surface. Spelt centred and centring, with no extra e.
Note
Older writers used it figuratively as well, as in Matthew Prior's "thy joys are centred all in me alone": to centre something in a person was to make that person the one point it rests on.
- 8The issue or element that matters most in a situation, decision or discussion, and around which everything else turns.
The minister found herself at the centre of the row over the leaked report.
Patient safety must stay at the centre of every decision the hospital makes.
UsageUsually at the centre of something: at the centre of a row. A person everyone watches is the centre of attention.
- 9In team sports such as rugby, netball, basketball, ice hockey, and American and Canadian football, a player in a central position in the team's line-up, or that position.
The young centre made a clever break before passing to the winger for the try.
Coaches often pair a powerful inside centre with a quicker outside centre.
UsageA player usually plays at centre or plays centre, with no the. Rugby has an inside centre and an outside centre.
Note
Each sport puts its centre somewhere different. Rugby union has two, called inside centre and outside centre; rugby league has left and right centres. In netball the centre may go anywhere except the two shooting circles; in basketball it is usually the tallest player, working nearest the basket; in ice hockey it is the forward between the wings who takes the faceoffs; in American football it is the player who snaps the ball to begin each play from scrimmage.
- 10The central government or ruling authority of a country, as distinct from its regional or local bodies, especially in a state where power is held centrally.
Governors in the frontier provinces often ignored instructions sent from the centre.
Tax money flowed inward to the centre while the outlying regions grew poorer.
Less common meanings
- 11The moderate political ground between left and right, or the parties and people who hold it, considered as a group.
The election left the centre squeezed between a resurgent left and a populist right.
After months of talks, a coalition of the centre took office.
UsageUsually the centre, like the left and the right. Also centre-left, centre-right and the centre ground.
- 12The inner filling of a chocolate or a similar sweet.
Each truffle has a rich ganache centre that melts as soon as you bite into it.
Nobody in our house will touch the ones with strawberry centres, so they are always left in the tin.
Similarfilling
- 13A cluster of nerve cells that governs one specific process in the body.
The respiratory centre in the brainstem sets the rhythm of breathing without any conscious effort.
Strong painkillers can depress the centres that keep breathing and heart rate steady.
- 14To adjust a quantity or setting, such as a voltage or a balance control, to a value midway between its extremes.
The technician centred the output voltage before calibrating the meter.
Before recording, centre the pan control so the voice sits midway between the two speakers.
- 15In football, a pass played from a wide position into the area in front of the opponents' goal; a cross.
Smith met the low centre at the near post and turned it past the keeper.
The winger's centres caused the defence problems all afternoon.
UsageA winger can also centre the ball, much as they cross it.
Note
A football word for a ball delivered from a wide position towards the goalmouth, much the same pass that is also called a cross. Commentators describe the delivery by its flight and quality: a low centre travels close to the ground, an inviting one gives a forward a good chance to score.
- 16The innermost point of the Earth, or the Earth as a whole, regarded as the fixed middle and foundation of the universe; also that foundation in the abstract.
Leo. No: if I mistake In those Foundations which I build upon, The Centre is not bigge enough to beare A Schoole-Boyes Top.
c. 1610, William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”Note
An obsolete sense from the old picture of the universe, in which the Earth sat still in the middle while the heavens turned about it. Seventeenth-century writers could call the Earth simply the Centre: Milton, in Paradise Lost (1667), measures Hell's distance from heaven against it, and Shakespeare's Leontes swears that if he is wrong, the Centre is too weak to bear a schoolboy's top.
Checked 4 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- The Earth or its innermost point was called the centre in an obsolete sense. en.wiktionary.org
- The old geocentric model placed a stationary Earth at the middle, with the heavenly bodies revolving around it. en.wikipedia.org
- The Shakespeare example belongs to the seventeenth century. en.wiktionary.org
- John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, which was first published in 1667. wwwe.lib.cam.ac.uk
- Milton compares Hell's distance from Heaven with three times the distance from the centre to the utmost pole. gutenberg.org
- Leontes is the Shakespeare character who makes the conditional assertion about the centre supporting a schoolboy's top. shakespeare.mit.edu
- 17The name of one of France's administrative regions before it was renamed Centre-Val de Loire.
Orléans was the capital of Centre, and it kept that role when the region became Centre-Val de Loire.
Older road maps label the whole area around the Loire châteaux simply as Centre.
- 18The point inside a figure of any number of dimensions whose coordinates are the mean of those of all points on its boundary, or of all interior points for a centre of volume.
- 19In two-up, a gambling game played in Australia and New Zealand, the ring within which the spinner works.
- 20A temporary framework that keeps the materials of an arch or vault in position until the structure can bear its own weight.
- 21Either of the two cone-shaped steel pins in a lathe or similar machine that hold the workpiece and around which it spins.
- 22A cone-shaped hollow formed in the end of a shaft or other workpiece to take the point of a lathe pin, so that the work can turn on it.
- 23To cut a cone-shaped recess in the end of a workpiece to receive the point of a lathe pin.
- 24In algebra, the set of elements of a group, semigroup, ring or algebra that commute with every element under its operation (multiplication, or the bracket for Lie algebras), usually written Z(G).
- 25A county of the state of Pennsylvania, in the United States, known in full as Centre County.
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Practice
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Origin
Ultimately from Ancient Greek kéntron, which comes from kenteîn ("to prick, goad"). The word travelled through Latin centrum and Middle French centre into Middle English, where it was spelt center or centre. Centrum is its doublet.