Eastern

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈiː.stən/

Definitions

1. Located in, directed toward, or characteristic of the direction where the sun rises, or relating to regions in that part of a geographical area
2. Related to the geographic area situated to the right when facing north, especially in reference to customs and regions typical of that direction
3. Pertaining to the cardinal direction opposite to west, this term also signifies qualities or features associated with countries and cultures in that geographical zone

Etymology: The adjective "eastern" is a simple formation: the noun "east" with the suffix "-ern", which turns a direction into a descriptive word, as in "northern" and "southern". The suffix is old, so the pattern was already well established when the word first appeared. The root goes back a long way. Its ancestor in Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of most European and many Asian languages, was a word meaning "dawn" or "east", which shows that the direction was named after the sunrise. Early Germanic speakers built their own form from it, and the same adjective survives in Old Saxon, Old High German and Old Norse, so the word was shared across the northern Germanic peoples long before English existed. In English the word appears in Middle English as "esturne" and "esterne" before settling into its modern spelling. Its Old English form, "ēasterne", was already in use, so the word has been part of the language since the earliest written English.

Synonyms: oriental, asiatic, easternmost, far eastern, southeastern

Antonyms: western, northern, southern, northwestern, southwestern