pivot

plural pivots

1. 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.

   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.

   1962 December, “The B.R. standard diesel-electric Type 1 locomotive”, in Modern Railways, page 382

2. broadlyfigurativelySomething or someone having a paramount significance in a certain situation.

   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.

   2012 August 18, “Banking reform: Sticking together”, in The Economist, archived from the original on 09 Mar 2023, issue

   2 more examples

   “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.[…]”

   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

   For Ron Shah, founder of Bizly, a new company that helps hotels book unused meeting rooms, his pivot began with disaster: the day he found his Manhattan office flooded, his conference room under three inches of water. […] Choosing to buy and to lead Spark, he said, “has been one of the greatest pivots I’ve made in life, allowing me to do what I do well.”

   2017 December 6, Caitlin Kelly, “For Entrepreneurs, a Tough Moment: The Pivot”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 30 Jun 2022

3. Act of turning on one foot.
4. governmentThe officer or soldier who simply turns in his place while the company or line moves around him in wheeling.
5. roller derbyA player with responsibility for co-ordinating their team in a particular jam.
6. computingAn 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.
7. computingA pivot table.
8. computingAny of a row of captioned elements used to navigate to subpages, rather like tabs.
9. mathematicsAn 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.
10. mathematicsA pivotal quantity.
11. Canadianball gamesA quarterback.
12. ball gamesA circle runner.
13. USgovernmentA shift during a general election in a political candidate's messaging to reflect plans and values more moderate than those advocated during the primary.

present singular third person pivots · participle present pivoting · participle past pivoted · past pivoted

1. intransitiveTo turn on an exact spot.
2. To make a sudden or swift change in strategy, policy, etc.
   1. slangbusinessTo change the direction of a business, usually in response to changes in the market.

      “Entrepreneurs usually have some inkling about a problem they can solve,” he said. “But typically they’re not exactly right. So if you survive long enough, you pivot and pivot and pivot and find what sticks.”

      2020 January 10, Paul Sullivan, “The Secret of Their Success: It’s Not About the Money”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 06 Jan 2021

      2 more examples

      Mr. Shah’s new business has signed up 25 New York City hotels and raised $1.5 million from angel investors and $3 million from a seed round. Yet three months into his new project, he has had to pivot again, realizing that his best customers are large businesses, not individuals.

      2017 December 6, Caitlin Kelly, “For Entrepreneurs, a Tough Moment: The Pivot”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 30 Jun 2022

      It was a fairly common strategy for startups in our space, but we were pivoting so frequently that it didn't quite work for us—if Nick found someone on Monday, by Friday we'd usually pivoted away from that sector so that it made no longer sense, and the advisor share paperwork we'd asked the lawyers to draw up would be left unfiled.

      2020, Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley

   2. USgovernmentTo shift a political candidate's messaging during a general election to reflect plans and values more moderate than those advocated during the primary.