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say it: FOH-kuhs
focus is a noun and verb meaning "the concentration of attention or energy on something". It is pronounced /ˈfoʊkəs/ — FOH-kuhs. It carries 12 recorded senses.
the concentration of attention or energy on something
“the focus of activity shifted to molecular biology”
“he had no direction in his life”
maximum clarity or distinctness of an image rendered by an optical system
“in focus”
“out of focus”
maximum clarity or distinctness of an idea
“the controversy brought clearly into focus an important difference of opinion”
a central point or locus of an infection in an organism
“the focus of infection”
a point of convergence of light (or other radiation) or a point from which it diverges
a fixed reference point on the concave side of a conic section
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for focus come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.