East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sunrise 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 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 language ἠώς
ēōs 'dawn, east'.
Examples of the same formation in other languages include
Latin Orient 'east, sunrise' from orior 'to rise, to originate',
Greek language ανατολή
Anatolia 'east' from ἀνατέλλω 'to rise' and Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine'.
Ēostre, a Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personification of both dawn and the cardinal points.
East is sometimes abbreviated as E.
Navigation
By convention, 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, Christian churches have been traditionally oriented towards the east.
After some early exceptions, this tradition of having the altar on the liturgical east has become a part of the church orientation concept liturgical east and west.
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 for, and referring to the same area as, the continent of Asia, divided into the Far East, Middle East, and Near East. Despite this Eurocentric origin, these regions are still located to the east of the Geographical centre of Earth.
Within an individual city within the Northern Hemisphere, the east end is typically poorer because the prevailing winds blow from the west.
See also
External links
