Library / English Dictionary |
NORTHWEST
Pronunciation (US): | (GB): |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A location in the northwestern part of a country, region, or city
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Hypernyms ("northwest" is a kind of...):
location (a point or extent in space)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The northwestern region of the United States
Synonyms:
Northwest; northwestern United States
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Instance hypernyms:
geographic area; geographic region; geographical area; geographical region (a demarcated area of the Earth)
Meronyms (parts of "Northwest"):
Cascade Mountains; Cascade Range; Cascades (a mountain range in the northwestern United States extending through Washington and Oregon and northern California; a part of the Coast Range)
Holonyms ("Northwest" is a part of...):
West; western United States (the region of the United States lying to the west of the Mississippi River)
Sense 3
Meaning:
The compass point midway between north and west; at 315 degrees
Synonyms:
nor'-west; northwest; northwestward; NW
Classified under:
Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas
Hypernyms ("northwest" is a kind of...):
compass point; point (any of 32 horizontal directions indicated on the card of a compass)
Sense 4
Meaning:
The direction corresponding to the northwestward compass point
Classified under:
Nouns denoting relations between people or things or ideas
Hypernyms ("northwest" is a kind of...):
direction (the spatial relation between something and the course along which it points or moves)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Situated in or oriented toward the northwest
Synonyms:
northwest; northwesterly; northwestern
Classified under:
Similar:
north (situated in or facing or moving toward or coming from the north)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Example:
northwesterly winds
Synonyms:
northwest; northwesterly
Classified under:
Similar:
north (situated in or facing or moving toward or coming from the north)
III. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
To, toward, or in the northwest
Synonyms:
nor'-west; north-west; northwest
Classified under:
Context examples:
Another large area with well-defined signatures is found across the northwest part of the crater rim and ejecta.
(Dawn Discovers Evidence for Organic Material on Ceres, NASA)
The scientists found that the larvae oriented to the magnetic northwest in the chamber, and, although deprived of all other environmental cues, oriented toward the same magnetic direction in the MagLab.
(North Atlantic haddock use magnetic compass to guide them, National Science Foundation)
An Arctic territory in northern Canada created in 1999 and governed solely by the Inuit; includes the eastern part of what was the Northwest Territories and most of the islands of the Arctic Archipelago.
(Nunavut, NCI Thesaurus)
A country in the Pacific, comprising a group of islands in the North Pacific Ocean, southeast of the Philippines and northwest of Papua New Guinea.
(Palau, NCI Thesaurus)
The four compass directions: northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest, located halfway between the cardinal directions.
(Ordinal Direction, NCI Thesaurus)
And as the dim ball of the sun sank slowly into the northwest he covered every inch—and many times—of his and Bill's flight south before the downcoming winter.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
University of Arizona scientists trekked across the Americas: from moist, tropical jungles of Panama to the frigid boreal forests of Colorado to the wet temperate forests of the Pacific Northwest.
(From tropical to boreal ecosystems, temperature drives functioning, National Science Foundation)
A sensor array off the Pacific Northwest coast has captured the cracking, bulging and shaking from the eruption of Axial Seamount, a nearly mile-high undersea volcano, in more detail than ever before.
(Underwater volcano's fiery eruption captured in detail by seafloor observatory, NSF)
Scientists previously focused most of their studies on Greenland's glaciers, in the southeast and northwest regions of the country, and found that the glaciers have increasingly been dislodging chucks into the ocean.
(Study: Greenland's Ice Melting Faster than Previously Thought, VOA)
Yet birth rates were higher among people to the North and East, in the San Juan Basin and northern San Juan regions of Northwest New Mexico and Southwest Colorado.
(Scientists chart a baby boom in southwestern Native Americans from 500 to 1300 A.D., NSF)