pivot

Etymology

Borrowed from French pivot, from Old French pivot (“hinge pin, pivot, penis”) (12 c.), of unknown origin.

noun

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. (figurative, by extension) Something or someone having a paramount significance in a certain situation.
   “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. […]” 1905, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, chapter 1, in The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace
3. Act of turning on one foot.
   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. 18 August 2012, “Banking reform: Sticking together”, in The Economist, issue
4. (military) The officer or soldier who simply turns in his place while the company or line moves around him in wheeling.
5. (roller derby) A player with responsibility for co-ordinating their team in a particular jam.
6. (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.
7. (computing) A pivot table.
8. (graphical user interface) Any of a row of captioned elements used to navigate to subpages, rather like tabs.
9. (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.
10. (Canadian football) A quarterback.
11. (handball) A circle runner.
12. (US, politics) 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.

verb

1. (intransitive) To turn on an exact spot.
2. To make a sudden or swift change in strategy, policy, etc.
   1. (business slang) To change the direction of a business, usually in response to changes in the market.
      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. 2017-12-06, Caitlin Kelly, “For Entrepreneurs, a Tough Moment: The Pivot”, in New York Times
      “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.” 2020-01-10, Paul Sullivan, “The Secret of Their Success: It’s Not About the Money”, in New York Times
      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. (US, politics) To shift a political candidate's messaging during a general election to reflect plans and values more moderate than those advocated during the primary.