longitude
/ˈlɑnd͡ʒəˌtud/ noun
Forms longitudes
- noun (geography) Angular distance measured west or east of the prime meridian.
- noun (geography, astronomy) Any imaginary line perpendicular to the equator and part of a great circle passing through the North Pole and South Pole.
- noun (archaic) Length.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English, borrowed from Old French longitude, from Latin longitūdō (“length, a measured length”), from longus (“long”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun Length; measure or distance along the longest line; --distinguished from breadth or thickness; as, the longitude of a room; rare now, except in a humorous sense. Sir H. Wotton.
- noun The arc or portion of the equator intersected between the meridian of a given place and the meridian of some other place from which longitude is reckoned, as from Greenwich, England, or sometimes from the capital of a country, as from Washington or Paris. The longitude of a place is expressed either in degrees or in time; as, that of New York is 74º or 4 h. 56 min. west of Greenwich.
Etymology [F., fr. L. longitudo, fr. longus long.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “longitude”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details