orient

Less common meanings

7. 7
   verbUStransitive

   To set a person or object so that its sides line up with the points of the compass; in surveying, to turn a plane-table map until its directions match those on the ground.

   The surveyor oriented the plane table by sighting back along a line she had already measured.

   Crews must orient the site grid to true north before the dig begins.

   Similarorientate

   Note

   Surveyors orient a plane table so that every line on its map runs parallel to its match on the ground. W. M. Gillespie's A Treatise on Land-surveying (1855) explains that without a compass this is done by sighting back along a line already fixed. Orient is the form American English favors; orientate means the same.

8. 8
   build facing eastverbUStransitive

   To build or set something so that it faces east.

   Medieval masons took care to orient each church, setting the altar at its eastern end.

   The archaeologists noted that the villagers had oriented every grave with the feet toward the east.

   Note

   The verb came from French orienter, built on the noun for the east, and this is its most literal use: setting a church, a grave or a building to face the sunrise. George Rolleston in 1868 describes Romano-British coffins as more or less accurately oriented, while the general pointing meaning widens east to any direction at all.

9. 9
   easternadjective

   Belonging to, facing, or situated in the east.

   From the orient shore of the lake, the travelers could see the mountains they had crossed.

   In the poem, the lovers meet each dawn beside the orient wall of the garden.

   Similareastern, east

   Oppositeoccidental

   Note

   Ordinary writing says eastern; this adjective survives only in poetry, where it lends a shore, a wall or a gate an old-fashioned ceremony that eastern lacks. Its partner in the same register is occidental, for the west. Outside verse, orient on its own will read as a conscious echo of older poetry.

10. 10
    eastern skynoununcountable

    The eastern part of the horizon, where the sun first appears each morning.

    A faint glow spread across the orient as the fishing boats left the harbor.

    By the time we reached the summit, the orient was already pale with dawn.

    Similareast

    Oppositeoccident, west

    Note

    Poets reach for this word when the sun comes up. Shakespeare's Sonnet 7 (1609) watches the gracious light lift his burning head in the Orient, and Tennyson's The Princess (1847) has morning furrowing all the orient into gold. Ordinary prose says the east or the eastern sky, so the word brings a literary glow wherever it appears.

11. 11
    pearl shinenoununcountable

    The brilliance or color that marks a pearl of high quality.

    Buyers judged each pearl by its size, its shape and above all its orient.

    Cheap imitations never match the deep orient of a fine natural pearl.

    Similarluster, sheen

    Note

    Here the name passes from the pearl itself to the quality that made it prized. Buyers speak of a pearl's orient the way they speak of its size or shape, as something it has in greater or lesser degree, so the word works as a mass noun: deep orient, little orient.

12. 12
    adjective

    Of a pearl or other gem, brilliant and of great value; more broadly, bright and lustrous.

    The auction catalog listed a single strand of orient pearls, each one perfectly round.

    Candlelight made the wine glow orient in its crystal decanter.

    Similarlustrous, brilliant, shining, radiant, luminous

    Oppositedull

    Note

    Outside verse this adjective is obsolete, and even in verse it belongs to gems and whatever shines like them. Shakespeare's Richard the Third (c. 1593) turns tears into orient pearl; Milton pours Comus an orient liquor in 1634; Richard Hakluyt's trade notes of 1580 list cloth of all orient colors. It belongs with the prized eastern pearl: what came from the East was the finest kind.

13. 13
    a pearlnounobsolete

    A pearl from the Indian region, famed for its brilliance; by extension, any pearl of unusual beauty and value.

    Each orient in the queen's necklace had been chosen for its luster.

    The jeweler's ledger records a pouch of orients bought from a trader just back from India.

    Note

    The pearl takes its name from the direction it came from: prized pearls from the Indian region lay to the east, and the word for the east came to mean the pearl itself. It counts like any noun, as in the fifty-two great orients on a hawk-glove in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The word is obsolete now; fine pearl says the same.

14. 14
    sunrise coloredadjectivedated

    Having the color of the sky at daybreak; brightly colored anywhere from red to yellow.

    The garden blazed with orient roses and marigolds in the late summer light.

    Her silk scarf was dyed a deep orient hue, somewhere between flame and gold.

    Note

    Sunrise supplies the palette here, anything from red to yellow, and the word belongs to dated, poetic description. Because the same spelling can mean eastern, a sentence needs enough color around it to make the shade plain: orient roses, an orient hue. The compound Orient red names one such shade.

15. 15
    rising (sun)adjectivedatedfiguratively

    Rising, in the way the sun rises at the start of the day.

    Fog lifted off the river as the orient sun cleared the eastern ridge.

    The poet hailed the young republic as an orient power whose day was only beginning.

    Similarrising

    Oppositesetting

    Note

    This is a dated poet's adjective, and Milton shows it at work in Paradise Lost (1667), where the moon now meets the orient sun. Applied to anything but the sun, it becomes a figure for something on the rise, such as a young power or a growing hope, and the sunrise should still be audible behind it.