Names of Compass Points
In some languages, points of the compass bear names etymologically derived from words for sunrise and sunset. The English words "orient" and "occident", meaning "east" and "west", respectively, are descended from Latin words meaning "sunrise" and "sunset". The word "levant", related e.g. to French "(se) lever" meaning "lift" or "rise" (and also to English "elevate"), is also used to describe the east. In Polish, the word for east wschód (vskhud), is derived from the morpheme "ws" - meaning "up", and "chód" - signifying "move" (from the verb chodzić - meaning "walk, move"), due to the act of the sun coming up from behind the horizon. The Polish word for west, zachód (zakhud), is similar but with the word "za" at the start, meaning "behind", from the act of the sun going behind the horizon. In Russian, the word for west, запад (zapad), is derived from the words за - meaning "behind", and пад - signifying "fall" (from the verb падать - padat'), due to the act of the sun falling behind the horizon.
Read more about this topic: Sunset
Famous quotes containing the words names, compass and/or points:
“It was a poetic recreation to watch those distant sails steering for half-fabulous ports, whose very names are a mysterious music to our ears.... It is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with more expectation. Nothing was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a word to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and delight, the canary that sings on the skull.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“Wi’ joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet,
An’ each for other’s weelfare kindly spiers:
The social hours, swift-winged, unnoticed fleet;
Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears;
The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;
Anticipation forward points the view:”
—Robert Burns (1759–1796)