centroid

noun

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

"centroid" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“centroid” is uncommon English (frequency #77,517 among 5,599 “C” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#77,517
frequency rank, English
5,599
“C” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The point at which gravitational force (or other universally and uniformly acting force) may be supposed to act on a given rigid, uniformly dense body; the centre of gravity or centre of mass.

Corpus desk

Index EN-centroid · centroid · English

centroid · rank #77,517 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #77,517
  • LEN-LONG 8 letters
  • VOW-3 3 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 5,599
  • PHOTO-FINISH cerium

Nearest frequency peer: cerium (+1 rank slots)

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Long-tail ranks near “centroid”

Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter

corpus weight

What this shows Long-tail view: where “centroid” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for centroid
PropertyValue
Headwordcentroid
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters8
Frequency rank#77,517
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “centroid” in English

Every-word frequency runs from the handful of words we use constantly (left) to the long tail used once in a blue moon (right).centroidfalls in this rarity band:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

The axis is logarithmic, with each marked tick roughly ten times rarer than the last. Rare peers in the same band: “cerium” (#77,518), “Chaves” (#77,521), “chelation” (#77,523). Among 5,599 “C” headwords, “centroid” is #77,517. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

centroid is uncommon English at frequency #77,517 among 5,599 “C” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 6 senses are on record.

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for centroid, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.

Etymologically, the entry records: From centre + -oid. From 1844, used as a replacement for the older terms "centre of gravity" and "centre of mass" in situations described in purely geometrical terms, and subsequently used for further generalisations. The correct English form is centroid, spelled C-E-N-T-R-O-I-D.

Definition

  1. 1
    The point at which gravitational force (or other universally and uniformly acting force) may be supposed to act on a given rigid, uniformly dense body; the centre of gravity or centre of mass.
  2. 2
    The point of intersection of the three medians of a given triangle; the point whose (Cartesian) coordinates are the arithmetic mean of the coordinates of the three vertices.
  3. 3
    the point whose (Cartesian) coordinates are the arithmetic mean of the coordinates of a given finite set of points.
  4. 4
    An analogue of the centre of gravity of a nonuniform body in which local density is replaced by a specified function (which can take negative values) and the place of the body's shape is taken by the function's domain.
  5. 5
    the arithmetic mean (alternatively, median) position of a cluster of points in a coordinate system based on some application-dependent measure of distance.
  6. 6
    Given a tree of n nodes, either (1) a unique node whose removal would split the tree into subtrees of fewer than n/2 nodes, or (2) either of a pair of adjacent nodes such that removal of the edge connecting them would split the tree into two subtrees of exactly n/2 nodes.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how centroid appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. The center of gravity of any body or geometrical magnitude is by definition the same as the centroid of a certain system of parallel forces. It will be convenient, therefore, to use the word centroid in most cases instead of center of gravity.[…]The centroid of any area may be found by the following method: Divide the area into parts such that the area an…
  2. For example, if a postal code area (PCA) has 1000 distinct residences, we might suppose all 1000 residences are at the centroid of the PCA. Centroids are commonly used, for example, with geographic information systems and CD-ROM phone books (Francis, Lowe, Rushton and Rayco 1999).

Etymology

From centre + -oid. From 1844, used as a replacement for the older terms "centre of gravity" and "centre of mass" in situations described in purely geometrical terms, and subsequently used for further generalisations.

Synonyms

barycentrecentre of areacentre of gravitycentre of masscentre of volumegeometric centregeometric centroidbarycentrecentre of gravitycentre of massfunction centroidtree centroid

This word in other languages

centroïde(Français)

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "centroid"?
"centroid" is spelled C-E-N-T-R-O-I-D.
What does "centroid" mean?
As a noun, "centroid" means: The point at which gravitational force (or other universally and uniformly acting force) may be supposed to act on a given rigid, uniformly dense body; the centre of gravity or centre of mass.
What is the origin of the word "centroid"?
From centre + -oid. From 1844, used as a replacement for the older terms "centre of gravity" and "centre of mass" in situations described in purely geometrical terms, and subsequently used for further generalisations. See the full etymology section above for more details.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar English words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "centroid", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked English headwords with 8 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

carboxyl#77,506Carberry#77,505cineplex#77,533Clarisse#77,536

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list