central

comparative more central · superlative most central · superlative centralmost · UK superlative centremost · US superlative centermost

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 of William Wordsworth, volume V, London: Longman, published 1827, page 340

   2 more examples

   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.

   2013 July 27, “Putting down roots”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8846

   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 decline – it needs rewilding”, in The Guardian

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, Phil McNulty, “Moldova 0-5 England”, in BBC Sport

   1 more example

   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.

   2020 May 6, Jim Steer, “Full Business Case offers fresh insight into HS2's prospects”, in Rail, page 51, photo caption

   Synonyms: dominant, main, principal

4. anatomyExerting its action towards the peripheral organs.
5. Belong or relating to the center of an algebraic structure.
   1. algebraOf an element of an algebraic structure: which commutes with all other elements under multiplication
   2. algebraOf a unital algebra over a field: whose center is exactly equal to the image of the base field

plural centrals

1. USespeciallycenter

1. 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).
2. An area of Central and Western district, Hong Kong.

   Thousands of protesters block the main street leading to the financial area known as the Central district outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong on Sept. 28, 2014.

   2015 October 2, Emily Rauhala, “Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, one year later”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 15 Oct 2015, World

   4 more examples

   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.

   2008 April 16, Joyce Hor-Chung Lau, “What in God’s Name is That? Hong Kong Street Food, Part 1”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2023, In Transit

   Last month, L Brands Inc lingerie chain Victoria's Secrets chose to locate its first Hong Kong stores at the mall and the prime downtown district of Central.[…] British fashion brand Topshop will open a 14,000 sq ft store in Central in June, paying $516,000 a month in rent.

   2013 May 20, Donny Kwok, Lavinia Mo, Yimou Lee, Twinnie Siu, “On fleeting Hong Kong trips, Chinese make frugal fashionable”, in Anne Marie Roantree, Miral Fahmy, editors, Reuters, archived from the original on 30 Jun 2024, Business

   For non-hikers, this tram, in operation since 1888, takes passengers from the bottom of Hong Kong Island’s Central neighborhood up 1,312 feet on Victoria Peak, the island’s highest mountain.

   2016 July 7, Dina Mishev, “Hong Kong’s urban jungle is real, not a metaphor for concrete and steel”, in The Washington Post, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 08 Jul 2016

   The sale of The Center, a 73-storey building in Hong Kong’s bustling Central district, surpassed a transaction earlier this year, where a prime commercial lot — occupied by a multi-storey car park also in Central — was sold off for HK$23.28 billion by the government to Henderson Land, which is owned by the city’s second richest man, Lee Shau-kee.

   2017 November 1, “Li Ka-shing’s Central skyscraper The Center sold for record HK$40.2 bn”, in Hong Kong Free Press, archived from the original on 06 Jul 2025, Hong Kong

3. The Central Line of the London Underground, originally known as the Central London Railway.
4. A district of Rasht County, Gilan Province, Iran.

1. not comparablehistoryOf or pertaining to the Central Powers.First known use 1910s

   On this score, then, it is quite clear that up to now neither the Entente nor the Central armies have been outmanœuvred, or indeed have invented a weapon of offence that has produced decisive results.

   1917, National and English Review, volume LXIX, London, page 625

1. A barangay of Kapangan, Benguet, Philippines.
2. A barangay of Tarlac City, Tarlac, Philippines.