centripetal

1. 1.

   tending to move toward a center

   “centripetal force”

   Antonymscentrifugal

   Similarinward-developinginward-moving
2. 2.

   tending to unify

   Synonymsunifying

   Similarcentralizing
3. 3.

   of a nerve fiber or impulse originating outside and passing toward the central nervous system

   “sensory neurons”

   Synonymsreceptivesensory

   Similarafferent

Questions about centripetal

What does centripetal mean?

centripetal means "tending to move toward a center". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in centripetal?

centripetal has 4 syllables: cen-tri-pe-tal. The stress falls on "tri".

What is another word for centripetal?

Close synonyms include unifying, receptive, sensory. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of centripetal?

The recorded antonyms are centrifugal.

Is centripetal a common word?

centripetal is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.