Word of the Day

: February 7, 2017

nexus

noun NEK-sus

What It Means

1 : connection, link; also : a causal link

2 : a connected group or series

3 : center, focus

nexus in Context

The new art exhibition is devoted to those artists whose work first began to form a nexus between high art and popular culture.

"Starting a weekly column about the nexus between media, technology, culture and politics in the middle of the 2016 presidential campaign was like parachuting into a hail of machine-gun crossfire." — Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times, 26 Dec. 2016

Did You Know?

Nexus is all about connections. The word comes from nectere, a Latin verb meaning "to bind." A number of other English words are related to nectere. The most obvious is connect, but annex (meaning "to attach as an addition," or more specifically "to incorporate into a political domain") is related as well. When nexus came into English in the 17th century, it meant "connection." Eventually, it took on the additional meaning "connected series" (as in "a nexus of relationships"). In the past few decades it has taken a third meaning: "center" (as in "the trade nexus of the region"), perhaps from the notion that a point in the center of an arrangement serves to join together the objects that surround it.