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/sˈɔlstɪs/ Listen

noun

Solstice n.

A stopping or standing still of the sun. (Obs.)

(Astron.)

(a)

The point in the ecliptic at which the sun is farthest from the equator, north or south, namely, the first point of the sign Cancer and the first point of the sign Capricorn, the former being the summer solstice, latter the winter solstice, in northern latitudes; so called because the sun then apparently stands still in its northward or southward motion.

(b)

The time of the sun's passing the solstices, or solstitial points, namely, about June 21 and December 21.

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Etymology of 'Solstice'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Solstice" Quotes from Famous Books

... of mental attitude is a terrible vice, for a simple and obvious reason. By an inevitable process like the swaying of the solstice the business world alternates between periods of boom and periods of depression. The wheel is always revolving, fast or slow, round the full cycle of over-or under-production. It is clear that a policy which is right in one stage of the process must necessarily be wrong in ...

— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook

... together. The vigil and the early morning of St. John's day, although a Christian festival, still retain a certain savor of paganism and primitive naturalism. This may be because of the approximate concurrence of this festival and the summer solstice. In any case, the scene to-night was of a purely mundane character, without any religious mixture whatever. All was love and gallantry. In our old romances and legends the Moor always carries off the beautiful Christian princess, and the Christian ...

— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... thousands of leagues per minute; at its aphelion it does not pass over more than a few yards. Its proximity to the Sun in its passage near that body caused Newton to think that it received a heat twenty-eight thousand times greater than that we experience at the summer solstice; and that this heat being two thousand times greater than that of red-hot iron, an iron globe of the same dimensions would be fifty thousand years entirely losing its heat. Newton added that in the end comets will approach ...

— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... contractor may be wisely safe-guarded. For if a contract is skilfully drawn, each may obtain a release from the other without disadvantage. From astronomy we find the east, west, south, and north, as well as the theory of the heavens, the equinox, solstice, and courses of the stars. If one has no knowledge of these matters, he will not be able to have any comprehension of ...

— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... Foerstemann the tortoise is the symbol of the summer solstice, as the snail, which occurs only as a head ornament in the manuscripts and not independently, is the symbol of the winter solstice; both, as the animals of slowest motion, represent the apparent standstill ...

— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

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