Pivot

A step in couple dancing that spins. If you're stepping onto your left foot, you step around your partner; and if you're stepping onto your right foot, you step between your partner's feet. Each and every step turns.

There are two types of pivots: traveling and non-traveling. In traveling pivots the couple turns 180^o with a single step, not unlike Chaînés in ballet, but with a partner. Thus each step travels in the same direction. Non-traveling pivots turn less than 180^o, and therefore don't go much of anywhere.

Pivots of a matrix are the left-most numbers on the rows of a matrix after doing Gaussian Elimination. If a matrix has all positive pivots, the matrix is positive definite.

Piv"ot (?), n. [F.; prob. akin to It. piva pipe, F. pipe. See Pipe.]

1.

A fixed pin or short axis, on the end of which a wheel or other body turns.

2.

The end of a shaft or arbor which rests and turns in a support; as, the pivot of an arbor in a watch.

3.

Hence, figuratively: A turning point or condition; that on which important results depend; as, the pivot of an enterprise.

4. Mil.

The officer or soldier who simply turns in his place whike the company or line moves around him in wheeling; -- called also pivot man.

Pivot bridge, a form of drawbridge in which one span, called the pivot span, turns about a central vertical axis. -- Pivot gun, a gun mounted on a pivot or revolving carriage, so as to turn in any direction. -- Pivot tooth Dentistry, an artificial crown attached to the root of a natural tooth by a pin or peg.

 

© Webster 1913.

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Piv"ot, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Pivoted; p. pr. & vb. n. Pivoting.]

To place on a pivot.

Clarke.

 

© Webster 1913.