use-icon

HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY

To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.

Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.

guide to the dictionary

use-icon

THE USAGE PANEL

The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.

The Panelists

open-icon

AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP

The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.

scroll-icon

THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG

The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.

100-words-icon

See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series!

Find out more!

open-icon

INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES?

Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com

cen·tral (sĕntrəl)
Share:
adj.
1. Situated at, in, or near the center: the central states.
2. Forming the center.
3. Having dominant or controlling power or influence: the company's central office.
4. Of basic importance; essential or principal: “Performance, including technological invention and artistic creation, will become central to education at all levels” (Frederick Turner).
5. Easily reached from various points: a central location for the new store.
6. Of or constituting a single source controlling all components of a system: central air conditioning.
7. Anatomy
a. Of, relating to, or originating from the nervous system.
b. Relating to a centrum.
8. Linguistics Articulated in the middle of the oral cavity; neither front nor back. Used of vowels, as the u in cut.
9. Holding to a moderate ideological position between two extremes.
n.
1.
a. A telephone exchange.
b. An operator at a telephone exchange.
2. A location or agency for the control or coordination of a group of related activities: air command central.
3. Informal
a. A place that is a notable site for a given activity: Their apartment was party central on weekends.
b. A place that is characterized by a high concentration of a given thing: On Saturdays, the zoo is toddler central.
[Latin centrālis, from centrum, center; see CENTER.]
central·ly adv.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
 

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

American Heritage Dictionary Products