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 root 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 and was abbreviated as O on maps and compasses. Today, it is often shortened to E.

On standard maps, east is conventionally on the right-hand side, a practice derived from compasses that place north at the top. For planets like Venus and Uranus, which rotate retrograde, east is on the left. To navigate east with a compass, one sets a bearing or azimuth of 90°.

Culturally, east is the direction of Earth’s rotation and thus where the Sun appears to rise. Praying toward the east predates Christianity, but the religion adopted the practice because the Orient was considered humanity’s original home. Consequently, Christian churches have traditionally been oriented with the altar on the liturgical east.

The Orient refers to the Eastern world relative to Europe—a metonym for Asia, divided into the Far East, Middle East, and Near East. Despite this Eurocentric origin, these regions lie east of Earth’s geographical center. One study suggests that in a Northern Hemisphere city, the east end tends to be poorer, as prevailing winds blow from the west.