Dictionary:
sep·ten·tri·on (sĕp-tĕn'trē-ŏn', -ən)  |
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin septentriōnēs, seven plow oxen, the seven principal stars of Ursa Major or Ursa Minor : septem, seven + triōnēs (pl. of triō, triōn-, plow ox).]
septentrional sep·ten'tri·o·nal (-trē-ə-nəl) adj.| Wordsmith Words: septentrion |
(sep-TEN-tree-on)
noun
The north.
Etymology
From Latin septentrionalis, from septentrio, singular of septentriones, originally septem triones, the seven stars of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, from septem (seven) and triones (a team of three plow oxen). These are the principal stars of the Great Bear, which is located in the region of the north celestial pole. These stars are more commonly perceived as the Big Dipper
Some other words based on septem are septemfluous, flowing in seven streams; septemplicate, one of seven copies of a document; septenary, pertaining or relating to the number seven, or forming a group of seven, as in the number of days in the week; septenate, growing in sevens, having seven divisions; and Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, from Latin septem via septuaginta, seventy, for the traditional number of translators.
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Look up Septentrional or septentrion in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Septentrional is a word that means "of the north", rarely used in English but commonly used in Latin and in the Romance languages. Early maps of North America, mostly those before 1700, often refer to the northern- or northwestern-most unexplored areas of the continent at "Septentrional" or "America Septentrionalis", sometimes with slightly alternate spellings.[1] The term septentrional, actually the adjectival form of the noun septentrion, itself refers to the seven stars of the Big Dipper asterism (aka "Septentrion").
The OED gives the etymology as
"Septentrional" is a more or less interchangeable term with "boreal." Ursa Major, the constellation containing the Big Dipper or Plough, dominates the skies of the North. There doesn't appear to be a truly comparable term linking the regions of the South with some prominent feature of the Southern Sky. The usual antonym for "septentrional" is "meridional." This word, however, doesn't refer to a celestial feature in the South, but to the noonday sun.
"Septentrional" is one of the rare (in English) words which turned up in James Joyce's Ulysses, to titillate the verbophiles of the Literary World.
Gene Wolfe used the word in The Book of the New Sun as part of the name of a palace guard, best known as Luis G. Uribe.
Voltaire used this word in Candide (chapter 11). He used the plural form septentrionaux. It only appears in the French version. In the English version, the word is translated to "northern".
The term, sometimes abbreviated to "Sep.", was used in historical astronomy to indicate the northern direction on the celestial globe, together with Meridional ("Mer.") for southern, Oriental ("Ori.") for eastern and Occidental ("Occ.") for western.[2]
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