: one of the four principal compass points north, south, east, and west
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the WebBut, for the Arensberg chronicle, the cardinal point is their friendship—the French magus and the gamier avatar of Henry James’s Daisy Miller. Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 7 Mar. 2022 Even the most sober-minded Egyptologists agreed that the pyramids were aligned to the cardinal points of the compass with a precision that would be difficult to better even in modern times. Jimmy Maher, Ars Technica, 15 Mar. 2020 Archaeoastronomers — those who study how ancient people related to the sky — tell us that many of the walls and windows at Chaco are aligned with cardinal points, the sun and other stars, and the buildings functioned as an observatory and calendar. Jim Robbins, New York Times, 6 Nov. 2019 Money and mystification, not knowledge or ignorance, are its cardinal points.Longreads, 17 Sep. 2019 The arrangement of forms would also allow visitors to enter the museum from any one of the cardinal points, making the museum more accessible.Los Angeles Times, 26 Aug. 2019 The original eastern entrance was for Mahayana Buddhists, while the other cardinal points represented the Hindu trinity of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. Antonia Neubauer, Town & Country, 5 Oct. 2016 Twice a year, the infamous city grid—which is actually off-kilter, about 29 degrees clockwise from the actual cardinal points of north, south, east, and west—lines up with the setting sun. Meredith Carey, Condé Nast Traveler, 28 May 2018 See More
Word History
First Known Use
1561, in the meaning defined above
Kids Definition
cardinal point
noun
: one of the four chief points of the compass which are north, south, east, west