East

East is a cardinal direction, one of the four main points on a compass. It lies directly opposite west and marks the general area where the Sun rises each day.

The term traces back through Middle English est and Old English ēast to the Proto-Germanic aus-to- or austra-, meaning "east" or "toward the sunrise." This root comes from the Proto-Indo-European aus-, meaning "to shine" or "dawn." Similar formations appear in other languages: Latin oriens (east, sunrise) from orior (to rise), Greek anatolé (east) from anatéllō (to rise), and Hebrew mizraḥ (east) from zaraḥ (to rise, to shine). The Germanic dawn goddess Ēostre may have personified both dawn and the cardinal points. During the Middle Ages, east was called the Orient, often abbreviated as O on maps and compasses. Today, it is commonly shortened to E.

In navigation, east is conventionally placed on the right-hand side of a map, a practice derived from compasses that put north at the top. However, on maps of planets like Venus and Uranus, which rotate retrograde, east appears on the left. To head east with a compass, one sets a bearing or azimuth of 90°.

Culturally, east is the direction of Earth’s rotation, so the Sun generally rises there. Praying toward the east predates Christianity, but the religion adopted it because the Orient was seen as humanity’s original home.

As a result, Christian churches have traditionally been oriented with the altar on the liturgical east. The Orient broadly refers to the Eastern world relative to Europe, often serving as a metonym for Asia, divided into the Far East, Middle East, and Near East—though these regions lie east of Earth’s geographical center. One study suggests that in a typical Northern Hemisphere city, the east end tends to be poorer, as prevailing winds blow from the west.