crankshaft vs pivot

crankshaft

noun
  • A rotating shaft that drives (or is driven by) a crank. 

verb
  • To deform in such a manner that part of the rod or bolt is displaced sideways, offset from the longitudinal axis of the part, but remains parallel with the part's main longitudinal axis, with the final shape somewhat resembling a crankshaft. 

pivot

noun
  • A thing on which something turns; specifically a metal pointed pin or short shaft in machinery, such as the end of an axle or spindle. 

  • An element of a set to be sorted that is chosen as a midpoint, so as to divide the other elements into two groups to be dealt with recursively. 

  • Any of a row of captioned elements used to navigate to subpages, rather like tabs. 

  • A quarterback. 

  • The officer or soldier who simply turns in his place while the company or line moves around him in wheeling. 

  • Something or someone having a paramount significance in a certain situation. 

  • A circle runner. 

  • A shift during a general election in a political candidate's messaging to reflect plans and values more moderate than those advocated during the primary. 

  • A player with responsibility for co-ordinating their team in a particular jam. 

  • An element of a matrix that is used as a focus for row operations, such as dividing the row by the pivot, or adding multiples of the row to other rows making all other values in the pivot column 0. 

  • A pivot table. 

  • Act of turning on one foot. 

verb
  • To shift a political candidate's messaging during a general election to reflect plans and values more moderate than those advocated during the primary. 

  • To turn on an exact spot. 

  • To change the direction of a business, usually in response to changes in the market. 

How often have the words crankshaft and pivot occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )