Word.ws English Dictionary

polycentric

polycentric adjective: having many centres, especially centres of authority or control.

Adjective

polycentric (comparative more polycentric, superlative most polycentric)

  1. Having many centres, especially centres of authority or control
    • When applied to other persons, the idea of comfort is an intuitive measure of trustworthiness, reliability, and predictability in a polycentric world that managers often find troubling, ambiguous, and anxiety-laden.1988, Robert Jackall, “Chapter 1: Moral Probations, Old and New”, in Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers, Twentieth Anniversary edition, →ISBN, page 13
  2. (of a chromosome, etc) Having multiple central parts

Noun

polycentric (plural polycentrics)

  1. A chromosome, etc. having multiple central parts.

Forms of polycentric

Adjective
comparativemore polycentric
superlativemost polycentric
Noun
pluralpolycentrics

Origin of polycentric

From poly- + -centric.

Words formed from polycentric

Questions about polycentric

What does polycentric mean?
Polycentric means having many centres, especially centres of authority or control.
What part of speech is polycentric?
Polycentric can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near polycentric in the dictionary

  1. polycellular
  2. polycellulosomal
  3. polycellulosome
  4. polycellulosomes
  5. polycentral
  6. polycentric
  7. polycentrically
  8. polycentricities
  9. polycentricity
  10. polycentrics
  11. polycentrid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: polycentric (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-polycentric.ogg.

Cite this entry: “polycentric.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/polycentric. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.