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Affixes: the building blocks of English
Affixes: the building blocks of English
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-centric

Having a specified centre.

[English centre, from Latin centrum or Greek kentron.]

Well-established examples include concentric (Latin con-, together), denoting things that share the same centre; heliocentric (Greek hēlios, sun), having or representing the sun as the centre, as in the accepted astronomical model of the solar system; and eccentric (literally, not placed centrally, from Greek ek, out of).

The ending also has a figurative sense of having a certain point of view or being mentally focused on some topic. Examples are egocentric (Latin ego, I), thinking only of oneself; Afrocentric, regarding African or black culture as pre-eminent; Eurocentric, centred or focused on European culture. This sense has become fashionable, especially in the computer industry, with many formations appearing that may not survive (network-centric, webcentric, UNIX-centric). Among the better established are PC-centric (concerning or promoting the personal computer or PC to the exclusion of other types of computer) and customer-centric (focused on the needs of the customer).

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