Other forms: longitudes
Longitude is position measured in degrees east or west of Greenwich. Fifty degrees of longitude, lines of longitude, longitude and latitude.
Finding it at sea needed an accurate clock, because the difference between local noon and the time at home gives the distance east or west — and building a clock that kept time on a rolling ship took Harrison forty years. The zero line runs through Greenwich by agreement of 1884.
1nounlongitudePosition measured in degrees east or west of Greenwich.
“To find the town on the map, you need both its latitude and its longitude.”
longitude is a measure of position.
Latin longitudo means length, from longus, long. Latitude, its partner, means breadth.
Latin
longitūdō — length, a measured length
Old French
longitude
English, today
longitude
Built from
From Middle English -, borrowed from Old French longitude, from Latin longitūdō (“length, a measured length”), from longus (“long”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA