The meaning of words is rarely stable throughout the history of a language, and English is no exception, witness the current change in the government of the verb to center, which has traditionally been used with the postposition on but is increasingly heard with around instead, especially in media speech.
Why is this occurring? The most straightforward explanation involves the effacement the core meaning of center in its verbal hypostasis. Speakers evidently no longer understand that the conceptual semantic integrity of center excludes the notion of “periphery” and is univocally bound up with the logical quiddity of the word. In other words, the postposition around is coming into use with the verb center because there has been an oblivion of the core meaning and a shift toward the erroneous meaning “association with.” This change-in-progress of contemporary American English speech has to be seen for what it is, viz. one of the many FAILURES OF THOUGHT confronted here in earlier posts.

MICHAEL SHAPIRO