What does longitude mean?
Word: Longitude
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Longitude means how far east or west a place is from an imaginary line that runs between the North and South Poles through Greenwich in London.
How do you spell longitude?
Syllables: lon - gi - tude
Tricky part: Many students copy latitude and add a t straight after the g. There is no t there.
Watch out for: longtitude, longditude, longetude
Memory tip: Unlike its partner latitude, this word goes straight from the g to the i with nothing in between.
Longitude in a sentence
Example 1: Sailors once found it very hard to work out their longitude at sea.
Example 2: We looked up the longitude of Kolkata for our geography project.
Example 3: Every place on the globe can be found from its latitude and longitude.
Fun Fact
Finding longitude at sea was so hard that in 1714 the British government offered a big prize; John Harrison's sea clocks showed how it could be done.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
Insert the correct pair of letters to form a word:
l_ngit_de
a) o, u
b) o, o
c) a, u
d) u, u
Show answer
a) o, u. The first part is the everyday word for not short, and the ending matches attitude.
Mingle-Mangle
Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:
duetinglo
a) solitude
b) longitude
c) lodging
d) longing
Show answer
b) longitude. Nine letters with one g and a u: solitude has an s, and longing and lodging are short and need two g's.
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the correctly spelt word:
a) equater
b) longitude
c) contanent
d) hemisfere
Show answer
b) longitude. Map words trip people up: the equator ends in or, a hemisphere uses ph, and a continent has an i after the t.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
Our teacher showed us how to read the longitude of Chennai on the big school atlas in geografy class.
a) atlas
b) teacher
c) longitude
d) geografy
Show answer
d) geografy. Geography spells its f sound with ph, as in photograph.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Two towns have the same longitude. What is true about them?
a) they are the same distance from the equator
b) they must be in the same country
c) one lies due north or south of the other
d) they always have the same weather
Show answer
c) one lies due north or south of the other
2. In which unit is longitude measured?
a) kilometres
b) litres
c) kilograms
d) degrees
Show answer
d) degrees
