Wiktionary
n. (alternative spelling of Western Hemisphere English)
WordNet
n. the hemisphere that includes North and South America [syn: occident, New World]
Wikipedia
The Western Hemisphere is a geographical term for the half of the earth that lies west of the prime meridian (which crosses Greenwich, UK) and east of the antimeridian, the other half being called the Eastern Hemisphere.
In this sense, the Western Hemisphere consists of the Americas, the western portions of Europe and Africa, the extreme eastern tip of Russia, numerous territories in Oceania, and a portion of Antarctica, while excluding some of the Aleutian Islands to the southwest of the Alaskan mainland.
In an effort to define the Western Hemisphere as the parts of the world which are not part of the Old World, there also exist projections which use the 20th meridian west and the diametrically opposed 160th meridian east to define the hemisphere. This projection excludes the European and African mainlands and a small portion of northeast Greenland, but includes more of eastern Russia and Oceania.
The population of the geographical Western Hemisphere exceeds 1 billion. Of the four hemispheres, only the Southern Hemisphere is less populated.
The highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere is Aconcagua in the Andes of Argentina at .
Usage examples of "western hemisphere".
The dying cruiser breaks up as spectacularly as her sister ship, raining debris across the entire western hemisphere as she disintegrates.
From their elevator car they looked down on most of the Western Hemisphere, centered over the Amazon basin, where brown water veined through the green lungs of Earth.
The other apprentices had left by different farcasters, she said, and the dropship had used the last of its power to ferry them to the various portals -- near the Golden Gate Bridge, at the edge of the Grand Canyon, atop the stone faces at Mount Rushmore, beneath the rusted girders of launch gantries at the Kennedy Spaceport Historical Park -- all over the western hemisphere of Old Earth, it seemed.
Death Valley, which among other things holds the record for hottest temperature ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere (134 degrees Fahrenheit), certainly qualifies in this respect, although it is not without its scenic aspects besides.
He had been appointed Chief of Western Hemisphere Intelligence in an organization being built from the ground up.
Nobody in the whole Western Hemisphere could do it, not even the sophisticated Mayas and Incas and Aztecs could imagine how to do it, until the Europeans came.
You can imagine what the bottoms of staircases and escalators, in the Western Hemisphere in particular, looked like after free will kicked in.
This makes the Sun pyramid the largest man-made structure in the Western hemisphere, the Great Pyramid the largest in the east.
And contrary to earlier hurricanes that zigged and zagged their way toward the Western Hemisphere, Lizzie was traveling in a straight line as if her mind was on a specific target.
Now, in all the Western Hemisphere dwells no man who may not find a school house within walking distance of his home, or at least within flying distance.
My trained investigators, following my mandate to handle all intelligence gathering in the Western Hemisphere, have known about this business from the beginning.
As this is a story of mankind and not an exclusive history of the people of Europe and our western hemisphere, you ought to know something of two men whose teaching and whose example continue to influence the actions and the thoughts of the majority of our fellow-travellers on this earth.