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Septentrional is a rarely used word that means "of the north". 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. The term septentrional, actually the adjectival form of the noun septentrion, itself refers to the seven stars of the Big Dipper asterism (aka "Septentrion"). Compass rose with north highlighted and at top North is one of the four cardinal directions, specifically the direction that, in Western culture, is treated as the primary direction: north is used (explicitly or implicitly) to define all other directions; the (visual) top edges of maps usually correspond to the...
Big Dipper map The seven brightest stars of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear, form a well-known asterism that has been recognized as a distinct grouping in many cultures from time immemorial. ...
In astronomy, an asterism is a recognized pattern of stars seen in Earths sky which is neither an official constellation nor a true star cluster. ...
The OED gives the etymology as OED stands for Oxford English Dictionary Office of Enrollment & Discipline This page concerning a three-letter acronym or abbreviation is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...
- [ad. L. septentrio, sing. of septentriōnēs, orig. septem triōnēs, the seven stars of the constellation of the Great Bear, f. septem seven + triōnes, pl. of trio plough-ox. Cf. F. septentrion.]
"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. "*Argonavital," "Magellanic," or even "Crucial" come to mind, but none of them has any pedigree, and the last one has obvious drawbacks in that it already has other meanings. 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. Ursa Major (Ursa Maior in Latin) is a constellation visible throughout the year in the northern hemisphere. ...
"Septentrional" was one of those obscure words which turned up in James Joyce's Ulysses, to titillate the verbophiles of the Literary World.
Gene Wolfe uses the word in The Book of the New Sun as part of the name of a palace guard. Gene Wolfe (born May 7, 1931) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. ...
The first two books of The Book of the New Sun, 2000 omnibus printing. ...
Voltaire also 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". Voltaire by 24 years of age by Nicolas de Largillière. ...
Candide, ou lOptimisme, (English: Candide, or Optimism) (1759) is a picaresque novel by the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. ...
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