linchpin
noun
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In his 1857 novel, Tom Brown’s School Days, Thomas Hughes describes the “cowardly” custom of “taking the linch-pins out of the farmers’ and bagmens’ gigs at the fairs.” The linchpin in question held the wheel on the carriage, and removing it made it likely that the wheel would come off as the vehicle moved. Such a pin was called a lynis in Old English; Middle English speakers added pin to form lynspin. By the early 20th century, English speakers were using linchpin for anything as critical to a complex situation as a linchpin is to a wagon, as when Winston Churchill, in 1930, wrote of Canada and the role it played in the relationship between Great Britain and the United States, that “no state, no country, no band of men can more truly be described as the linchpin of peace and world progress.”
Examples of linchpin in a Sentence
Phillimon Zongo, Forbes.com, 10 July 2025
The theater, which occupies a prominent corner on East Flagler, was long a linchpin of downtown’s life and economy.
—Andres Viglucci, Miami Herald, 26 June 2025
For nearly two centuries, the McAlpine locks and their predecessors have served as a linchpin of commerce on the Ohio River.
—Connor Giffin, The Courier-Journal, 9 July 2025
Now, however, the claim that the U.S. is under invasion has become the legal linchpin of President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-immigrant campaign.
—Molly Redden, ProPublica, 23 May 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Linchpin.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/linchpin. Accessed 25 Jul. 2025.
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linchpin
noun
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