a social policy or racial segregation involving political and economic and legal discrimination against people who are not Whites; the former official policy in South Africa
the upper part of a column that supports the entablature
one of the large alphabetic characters used as the first letter in writing or printing proper names and sometimes for emphasis; "printers once kept the type for capitals and for small letters in separate cases; capitals were kept in the upper half of the type case and so became known as upper-case letters"
the federal government of the United States
a seat of government
a center that is associated more than any other with some activity or product; "the crime capital of Italy"; "the drug capital of Columbia"
wealth in the form of money or property owned by a person or business and human resources of economic value
assets available for use in the production of further assets
uppercase; "capital A"; "great A"; "many medieval manuscripts are in majuscule script"
of primary important; "our capital concern was to avoid defeat"
a position on a basketball team of the player who participates in the jump that starts the game
the position of the player on the line of scrimmage who puts the ball in play; "it is a center's responsibility to get the football to the quarterback"
the position on a hockey team of the player who participates in the face off at the beginning of the game
a building dedicated to a particular activity; "they were raising money to build a new center for research"
a cluster of nerve cells governing a specific bodily process; "in most people the speech center is in the left hemisphere"
the object upon which interest and attention focuses; "his stories made him the center of the party"
the sweet central portion of a piece of candy that is enclosed in chocolate or some other covering
politically moderate persons; centrists
the middle of a military or naval formation; "they had to reinforce the center"
a place where some particular activity is concentrated; "they received messages from several centers"
a point equidistant from the ends of a line or the extremities of a figure
an area that is approximately central within some larger region; "it is in the center of town"; "they ran forward into the heart of the struggle"; "they were in the eye of the storm"
(football) the person who plays center on the line of scrimmage and snaps the ball to the quarterback; "the center fumbled the handoff"
(basketball) the person who plays center on a basketball team
(ice hockey) the person who plays center on a hockey team
of or belonging to neither the right nor the left politically or intellectually
move into the center; "That vase in the picture is not centered"
a function word that combines with a noun or pronoun or noun phrase to form a prepositional phrase that can have an adverbial or adjectival relation to some other word
(linguistics) the placing of one linguistic element before another (as placing a modifier before the word it modifies in a sentence or placing an affix before the base to which it is attached)
colorless watery fluid of blood and lymph containing no cells and in which erythrocytes and leukocytes and platelets are suspended
(physical chemistry) a fourth state of matter distinct from solid or liquid or gas and present in stars and fusion reactors; a gas becomes a plasma when it is heated until the atoms lose all their electrons, leaving a highly electrified collection of nuclei and free electrons; "particles in space exist in the form of a plasma"
a green slightly translucent variety of chalcedony used as a gemstone