The original meaning of epicenter (or epicentre, as it’s spelled outside the U.S.) is the point of the earth’s surface above the center of an earthquake. Extending from this definition, the word has also come to mean the center of a negative or dangerous event. This newer sense of epicenter is useful, as there are few alternatives that carry the same meaning.
But the word is overextended when writers dispense with the negative connotations and use epicenter as merely a synonym of center. In such cases, there’s no reason not to use center. Let’s save epicenter for disasters and crises and other negative things.
Examples
Here are a few instances of epicenter that we consider questionable:
The battle royale brewing between New York and Silicon Valley to be the nation’s dominant epicenter for tech innovation and hot start-ups wages on. [New York Times]
Boasting the UK’s largest Korean community, New Malden – and Burlington Road in particular – is the epicentre of Korean food in the UK. [Guardian]
And if there’s an epicentre of the puppet scene these days, it’s in an industrial park just off the Macleod Trail … [Calgary Herald]
Unless we’re missing something, these writers obviously mean center, not epicenter.
In contrast, these writers use epicenter well:
He maintained that Greece, the epicenter of the crisis, would remain in the single currency zone. [CNN]
Driving to work each day was like driving to the epicentre of a neutron bomb site. [Independent]
In Greece, the epicentre of the continent’s financial disarray, government officials announced new austerity measures … [Sydney Morning Herald (now offline)]
