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
Etan Vlessing, HollywoodReporter, 2 Oct. 2025
Woods and Lewis were the linchpins of the five-boy team's 36-hole score of 1-over, edging out second-place Sarasota High School by four shots.
—Julio Cesar Valdera Morales, MSNBC Newsweek, 30 Sep. 2025
His bat may be a linchpin for the Phillies this postseason.
—Stephen J. Nesbitt, New York Times, 30 Sep. 2025
Since 2014, the United States has been the linchpin of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, an international counterterrorism group that has worked with local security forces to degrade ISIS.
—Caroline Rose, Foreign Affairs, 18 Sep. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Linchpin.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/linchpin. Accessed 10 Oct. 2025.
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linchpin
noun
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