the.com/axis

means A straight line, real or imagined, that something rotates around or is measured against — or a central alliance that other things organize themselves around.

from From Latin 'axis,' meaning axle or pivot, which traces back to a very old Indo-European root (also behind words like 'axle' itself) for a turning shaft on a cart or wheel. The word rolled almost unchanged from literal cart-axles into geometry and astronomy — Earth's axis is just a very large, very metaphorical axle — and later into politics, where 'Axis' powers were nations pivoting together around a shared alliance.