Other forms: hemispheres
A hemisphere is half a ball. Cut an orange through the middle and each piece is a hemisphere; do the same to the Earth along the equator and you get the northern and southern ones.
Which hemisphere you live in decides your seasons: Australia is in the southern hemisphere, so Christmas there falls in high summer. A second cut, running north to south, gives the eastern and western hemispheres. The word leaves geography as well - your brain has two of them, a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere, joined in the middle. In geometry it is any half of any sphere, so a dome is a hemisphere in stone. The adjective is hemispherical, and the hemi- at the front means half, exactly as it does in hemisphere's cousins.
1nounhemisphereHalf of the Earth, divided at the equator or by a line running north to south.~69%
“Australia lies in the southern hemisphere, so Christmas falls in summer.”
2nounhalvesEither of the two halves of the brain.~23%
“Language is handled mostly in the left hemisphere.”
3nounsphereHalf of any sphere.~8%
“The roof was built as a perfect hemisphere of glass and steel.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
hemisphere is half of a sphere.
Hemisphere arrived from Latin hemisphaerium, which took it from Ancient Greek hemisphairion: hemi-, 'half', plus sphaira, 'sphere'. English already had a word of its own for the shape, healftrendel, and the Greek one pushed it out. Every hemisphere you meet, from the Earth to the brain, is that old half-of-a-ball still doing its work.
Ancient Greek
ἡμισφαίριον
Latin
hemisphaerium
English, today
hemisphere
Built from
From Latin hemisphaerium, from Ancient Greek ἡμισφαίριον, from ἡμι- (“half”) + σφαῖρα (“sphere”). Equivalent to hemi + sphere. Displaced native healftrendel.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA