![Compass Rose English East](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Compass_Rose_English_East.svg)
East or Orient is one of the four
cardinal direction
The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, east, south, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, E, S, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are at ...
s or
points of the compass
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...
. It is the opposite direction from
west and is the direction from which the
Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that east is the direction where the Sun rises: ''east'' comes from
Middle English ''est'', from
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
''ēast'', which itself comes from the
Proto-Germanic *''aus-to-'' or *''austra-'' "east, toward the sunrise", from
Proto-Indo-European *aus- "to shine," or "
dawn", cognate with
Old High German ''*ōstar'' "to the east",
Latin ''aurora'' 'dawn', and
Greek ''ēōs'' 'dawn, east'. Examples of the same formation in other languages include
Latin oriens 'east, sunrise' from orior 'to rise, to originate',
Greek ανατολή
anatolé 'east' from ἀνατέλλω 'to rise' and Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine'. ''
Ēostre
() is a West Germanic spring goddess. The name is reflected in ang, *Ēastre (; Northumbrian dialect: ', Mercian and West Saxon dialects: ' ),Sievers 1901 p. 98 Barnhart, Robert K. ''The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology'' (1995) ...
'', a
Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personification of both dawn and the cardinal points.
Navigation
By
convention
Convention may refer to:
* Convention (norm), a custom or tradition, a standard of presentation or conduct
** Treaty, an agreement in international law
* Convention (meeting), meeting of a (usually large) group of individuals and/or companies in a ...
, the ''right-hand side'' of a
map is east. This convention has developed from the use of a compass, which places
north at the top. However, on maps of planets such as
Venus and
Uranus which rotate
retrograde, the left hand side is east.
To go east using a compass for
navigation, one sets a
bearing or
azimuth of 90°.
Cultural
East is the direction toward which the
Earth rotates about its
axis, and therefore the general direction from which the
Sun appears to rise. The practice of praying towards the East is older than
Christianity, but has been
adopted by this religion as the Orient was thought of as containing mankind's original home. Hence, some Christian churches have been traditionally oriented towards the east. This tradition of having the altar on the liturgical east is a part of the church orientation concept
liturgical east and west
Liturgical east and west is a concept in the orientation of churches. It refers to the fact that the end of a church which has the altar, for symbolic religious reasons, is traditionally on the east side of the church (to the right in a diagram) ...
.
The ''Orient'' is the ''East'', traditionally comprising anything that belongs to the
Eastern world, in relation to Europe. In English, it is largely a
metonym
Metonymy () is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept.
Etymology
The words ''metonymy'' and ''metonym'' come from grc, μετωνυμία, 'a change of name' ...
for, and referring to the same area as, the continent of Asia, divided into the
Far East,
Middle East, and
Near East
The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...
. Despite this Eurocentric origin, these regions are still located to the east of the
Geographical centre of Earth.
Within an individual city, the east end is typically poorer because the prevailing winds blow from the west.
See also
*
Intermediate Region
The Intermediate Region is an established geopolitics, geopolitical model set forth in the 1970s by the Greece, Greek historian Dimitri Kitsikis, professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada. According to this model, the Eurasian continent is c ...
*
Easting
A projected coordinate system, also known as a projected coordinate reference system, a planar coordinate system, or grid reference system, is a type of spatial reference system that represents locations on the Earth using cartesian coordina ...
*
Oriental
The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the ...
References
External links
*
{{CandODirections
Orientation (geometry)
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