equinox •\ˈē-kwə-ˌnäks, ˈe-\• noun
1. either of two times of the year when the sun crosses the plane of the earth’s equator and day and night are of equal length
2. (astronomy) either of the two celestial points at which the celestial equator
intersects the ecliptic
Every Monday for the rest of the school year, we’ll feature a Word of the Day that was the subject of one of our favorite entries from our 2016 Vocabulary Video Contest.
The word equinox has appeared in 47 New York Times articles in the past year, including on March 21 in the Trilobites column “What Spring Looks Like From Space” by Nicholas St. Fleur:
The spring equinox is a point in Earth’s orbit where the sun shines directly above the Equator, creating nearly equal periods of daytime and nighttime across the globe.
“Only on the equinoxes do we get that exactly straight terminator,” said Greg Redfern, a solar system ambassador at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, referring to the line separating daylight from the darkness of night.
Think you know “equinox”? Quiz yourself: