pivot

Definitions

• 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.
• (figuratively) Something or someone having a paramount significance in a certain situation.
• Act of turning on one foot.
• (military) The officer or soldier who simply turns in his place while the company or line moves around him in wheeling.
• (roller derby) A player with responsibility for co-ordinating their team in a particular jam.
• (computing) 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.
• (computing) A pivot table.
• (GUI) Any of a row of captioned elements used to navigate to subpages, rather like tabs.
• (mathematics) 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.
• (Canadian football) A quarterback.
• (US) 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.