EQUATOR • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Equator

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/ɪkwˈeɪtər/ Listen

noun

Equator n.

(Geog.) The imaginary great circle on the earth's surface, everywhere equally distant from the two poles, and dividing the earth's surface into two hemispheres.

(Astron.) The great circle of the celestial sphere, coincident with the plane of the earth's equator; so called because when the sun is in it, the days and nights are of equal length; hence called also the equinoctial, and on maps, globes, etc., the equinoctial line.

Equator of the sun or Equator of a planet (Astron.), the great circle whose plane passes through through the center of the body, and is perpendicular to its axis of revolution.

Magnetic equator. See Aclinic.

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Etymology of 'Equator'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Equator" Quotes from Famous Books

... Committee in London. The transit of the moon has been observed with much success. Sea observations from the log-books of vessels touching at Mauritius are carefully recorded. The tracks and positions at noon of 299 tropical cyclones, which swept over the Indian Ocean south of the equator from 1856 to 1886, have been laid down on charts, and are ready for publication. The in-curving theory of cyclones, as worked out by Dr. Meldrum, is now generally adopted, and it would appear that the rules given for the guidance of ships in the ...

— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... The large steamer of 251 tons was put together at Khartoum, to add to the river flotilla, thus increasing the steam power from four vessels, when I had arrived in 1870, to THIRTEEN, which in 1877 were plying between the capital of the Soudan and the equator. The names of Messrs. Samuda Brothers and Messrs. Penn and Co. upon the three steel steamers and engines which they had constructed for the expedition are now evidences of the civilizing power of the naval and mechanical engineers of Great Britain, which has linked with the great world ...

— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... to be pinched by one and squeezed by another and torn asunder by a third; now to be painted by this and now blistered by that; now tormented with heat and soon chilled with cold; hurried from the Arctic Circle to sweat at the Equator, and then sent on an errand to the Southern Pole; forced through transmigrations of fish, fowl and flesh; and, if in some corner of creation the poor thing finds leisure to die, searched out and whipped to life again and ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... flowers and of palm forests. On the outside were rustic seats about a pond where, in waters made tepid by steam heat through iron pipes, all kinds of tropical plants flourished in a profusion perhaps not excelled anywhere on the equator or along the banks of the Amazon. The great flower clock and the immense flower globe showing the geography of the earth, the old English castle gate and the carpeted lawns showed them the skill of ...

— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... and removed his soft gray hat, held it against his generous equator, and bowed so low as to set him puffing a little afterward. His eyes, however, ...

— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

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