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latitude [latitude 词源字典]: latitude: [14] Latin lātus meant ‘broad’. From it were derived dīlātāre ‘spread out’ (source of English dilate) and lātitūdō, which English took over as latitude. Its use as a cartographical term stems from the oblong maps of the ancient world, in which distance from north to south represented ‘breadth’ (hence latitude), and distance from east to west represented ‘length’ (hence longitude [16], from Latin longitūdō, a derivative of longus ‘long’).
=> dilate[latitude etymology, latitude origin, 英语词源]
cartography (n.): 1843, from French cartographie, from Medieval Latin carta (see card (n.)) + French -graphie, from Greek -graphein "to write, to draw" (see -graphy). Related: Cartographer; cartographic.
meridian (n.): mid-14c., "noon," from Old French meridien "of the noon time, midday; the Meridian; southerner" (12c.), and directly from Latin meridianus "of midday, of noon, southerly, to the south," from meridies "noon, south," from meridie "at noon," altered by dissimilation from pre-Latin *medi die, locative of medius "mid-" (see medial (adj.)) + dies "day" (see diurnal). Cartographic sense first recorded late 14c. Figurative uses tend to suggest "point of highest development or fullest power."

The city in Mississippi, U.S., was settled 1854 (as Sowashee Station) at a railway junction and given its current name in 1860, supposedly by people who thought meridian meant "junction" (they perhaps confused the word with median).
projection (n.): late 15c., in alchemy, "transmutation by casting a powder on molten metal; 1550s in the cartographical sense "drawing of a map or chart according to scale," from Middle French projection, from Latin proiectionem (nominative proiectio), from past participle stem of proicere (see project (n.)). From 1590s as "action of projecting."