arctic circle

1. Alternative letter-case form of Arctic Circle.

alternative arctic circle

1. The parallel of latitude that runs 66° 33′ 39″ north of the Equator, which marks approximately the southernmost place in the Northern Hemisphere where the sun does not set on the summer solstice and does not rise on the winter solstice.

   Then he tells us that the Bear, or Stars of the Arctick Circle, never disappear; as an Observation which agrees with no other.

   1715, Alexander Pope, “An Essay on the Life, Writings and Learning, of Homer”, in The Iliad of Homer, London: Bernard Lintott, page 51

   3 more examples

   1603, Philemon Holland (translator), The Philosophie, commonlie called, the Morals written by the Learned Philosopher Plutarch of Chæronea, London, The Opinions of the Philosophers, Book 3, Chapter 14, p. 825, PYTHAGORAS saith, that the earth is divided into five Zones proportionably to the sphaere of the universall heaven; to wit, the Artick circle, the Tropick of Summer, the Tropick of Winter, the Aequinoctiall and the Antartick.

   […] look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the Whale Fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson’s Bay, and Davis’s Streights, whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the Antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south.

   1775, Edmund Burke, The Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq; on Moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, London: J. Dodsley, page 13

   Then, some five miles north of Bolna, the entry into the Arctic is heralded by a long blast on the whistle of the engine. The Arctic Circle is marked by a sign on the east side of the line.

   1957 August 28, H. A. Vallance, “By Rail to the Norwegian Arctic”, in Railway Magazine, page 574