WORD A DAY

OCCIDENT: regions or countries lying to the west of a specified or implied point of orientation

You may not be reflecting on the history of the word "Occident" as you watch a beautiful sunset, but there is a connection. "Occident," which comes from the Latin occidere, "to fall," once referred to the part of the sky in which the sun goes down. Geoffrey Chaucer used the word in that now-obolete sense around 1386, and shortly thereafter the word took on the "western regions and countries" sense that we still use. Exactly what is meant by "western" is not always the same. Originally, "Occident" referred to western Europe or the Western Roman Empire. In modern times, it usually refers to some portion of Europe and North American distinct from Asia. The opposite of "Occident" is "Orient," which come from the Latin oriri ("to rise").