Other forms: wests
West is the direction where the sun goes down. Head west, the west coast, a west wind.
A west-facing garden gets the evening sun, which many people prefer to the morning. The West, capitalised, means Europe and North America taken together as a political and cultural bloc, and Western in that sense is a loaded and much-argued term. In America, the West is the western states, and a Western is a film about them. Note go west, which is British slang for being lost or broken.
1nounwestThe direction where the sun goes down.
“The sun sets in the west.”
2nouneuropeEurope and North America taken together.
“Many students from Asia come to study in the West.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
west is a direction.
Old English west is Germanic and comes from a root meaning evening or downward — the same root as the Latin vesper. The direction is named after the time of day the sun is there.
Proto-Indo-European
*wek⁽ʷ⁾speros
Middle English
west
English, today
west
From Middle English west. From Middle English west, from Old English west, from Proto-West Germanic westr (“western”), from Proto-Germanic westrą (“west”), from Proto-Germanic westraz (“west”), from Proto-Indo-European wek⁽ʷ⁾speros (“evening”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA