East

East is a direction in geography. It is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points, opposite of west and at right angles to north and south. 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 etymology of east is from a Proto-Indo-European language word for dawn. Cf. Latin aurora and Greek eōs. Eostre, a Germanic goddess of dawn, might have been a personification of both dawn and the cardinal point.

By convention, an ordinary terrestrial map is oriented so the right side is east. This convention dates from the Renaissance. Many medieval maps were oriented with the Orient (the East) east at the top, which is the source of the verb orient.

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Last updated on Wednesday January 02, 2008 at 11:05:16 PST (GMT -0800)
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