The Collaborative International Dictionary
Solstitial \Sol*sti"tial\, a. [L. solstitialis: cf. F. solsticial.]
Of or pertaining to a solstice.
Happening at a solstice; esp. (with reference to the northern hemisphere), happening at the summer solstice, or midsummer. ``Solstitial summer's heat.''
--Milton.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1550s, from Latin solstitialis, from solstitium (see solstice).
Wiktionary
a. 1 Pertaining to a solstice. 2 Occurring on a solstice.
Usage examples of "solstitial".
The colors of the four are White, Blue, Crimson, and Purple, and the banners bear the images of the Bull, the Lion, the Man, and the Eagle, the Constellations answering 2500 years before our era to the Equinoctial and Solstitial points: to which belong four stars, Aldebaran, Regulus, Fomalhaut, and Antares.
In SCORPIO, ANTARES, of the 1st magnitude, and remarkably red, was one of the four great Stars, FOMALHAUT, in Cetus, ALDEBARAN in Taurus, REGULUS in Leo, and ANTARES, that formerly answered to the Solstitial and Equinoctial points, and were much noticed by astronomers.
The intersection of the Zodiac by the colures at the Equinoctial and Solstitial points, fixed four periods, each of which has, by one or more nations, and in some cases by the same nation at different periods, been taken for the commencement of the year.
Everywhere, even in our Order, survive the equinoctial and solstitial feasts.
Clinging to the mast of this magic cherry tree was an abundance of equally inadmissible mistletoe, sacred since the dawn of time, when the Druids used to harvest it with silver sickles before going on to perform solstitial rites of memorable beastliness at megalithic sites all over Europe.
And, besides, in this dark solstitial season, are we not more than amply enriched by your own luminous presence, my friend?
Sacred Lake for water, as a preparation for the first of the solstitial rain dances.
These contests were aggravated by the season: they took place during summer, when the southern Asiatic wind came laden with intolerable heat, when the streams were dried up in their shallow beds, and the vast basin of the sea appeared to glow under the unmitigated rays of the solstitial sun.
A south-west wind brought up rain--the sun came out, and mocking the usual laws of nature, seemed even at this early season to burn with solstitial force.
As radius automatically calls circle to mind so axis should invoke the two determining great circles on the surface of the sphere, the equinoctial and solstitial colures.
They represent the equinoctial and solstitial colures, binding together the four constellations in which the sun continues to rise at the spring and autumn equinoxes and at the winter and summer solstices for epochs of just under 2200 years.
It marks apparently one of the stages in the progress of the winter feast towards its present solstitial date.
Sanctuaries was that of the order of the Known Universe, or the spectacle of Nature itself, surrounding the soul of the Initiate, as it surrounded it when it first descended through the planetary gates, and by the equinoctal and solstitial doors, along the Milky Way, to be for the first time immured in its prison-house of matter.
He then completed his triumph, mounted on an ass, in the constellation Cancer, which then occupied the Solstitial point of Summer.
Of course the commencement of the 121st year would not correspond with the Summer Solstice, but would precede it by a month: so that, when the Sun arrived at the Solstitial point whence he at first set out, and whereto he must needs return, to make in reality 120 years, or 120 complete revolutions, the first month of the 121st year would have ended.