Avoiding spelling mistakes

Equatorial 

The adjective equatorial means being near, or having to do with, the equator. On any planet, the equator is an imaginary line dividing it equally into north and south. On Earth, more than three-fourths of the Equator is over water. Indonesia has the most land and sea area on the equator of any country. Among other countries which the equator passes through are Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Sao Tome & Principe, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Maldives, and Kiribati.

All Thammasat University students know that the south of Thailand is close to the equator without crossing it, so Thailand is not counted among the equatorial nations. Equatorial is an important word, but it is sometimes seen spelled wrongly as equitorial in Thai English.

The letters equa and equi are both derived from Latin terms meaning equal, no word origins do not help us remember which spelling is correct. One way to possibly avoid this challenge would be to remind ourselves of all the words which begin with the letters equa, to be able to associate them with the term equatorial. They include:

equability

equable

equal

equality

equanimity

equate

equation

There are also many words that contain the letters equa, for example:

adequacy

adequate

coequal

inadequacy

prequalification

sequacity

unequal

There are also many words that begin with the letters equi, even if equatorial is not one of them:

equidistant

equilateral

equilibrium

equine

equinox

equip

equipage

equipment

equitability

equity

equivalence

equivalent

equivocal

equivocate

Possibly the surest way to remember the correct spelling of equatorial is to invent a short sentence that will help us think of the right approach, such as:

We should never equate equatorial with other words spelled with the letters equi.  

Are equality and equanimity always found in equatorial countries?

Some usage examples:

• Rayong gains appetite for value-added fruit and herbal products. With the aim of setting up Rayong in the role of a world-centre for value-added fruit and herbal products, Suphattraland fruit garden is collaborating with partners to create a world-class research hub at its site in the province. Suphattraland is working with the Drug Discovery and Development Centre and partners to create a research and development centre, the Suphattraland Excellent Agriculture Research Centre Hub (SEARCH), along with the Thailand Equatorial Fruit and Herbal Park. The centre will collect fruits and herbs from countries that share Thailand’s equatorial latitude, said Suwat Faprathanchai, managing director of Suphattraland. Those countries are Vietnam, the Philippines, India, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Mexico.
• A map was attached on which several great equatorial lakes are shown, and the empire of Monomwezi or Unyamwezi is laid down.
• The concentration of these substances is least in the warm equatorial seas and greatest near the poles.
• From the surface to 500 fathoms the general form of the isothermals remains the same, except that instead of an equatorial maximum belt there is a focus of maximum temperature off the eastern coast of the United States.
• On the eastern side the southern flora finds representatives in Abyssinia, including Protea, and on the mountains of equatorial Africa, Calodendron capense occurring on Kilimanjaro.
• The daughter nuclei may have arrived at the anaphase stage, and have even gone the length of forming a nuclear membrane, without an equatorial depression having shown itself in the cell-body.
• Buchanan pointed out in 1876, that the great contrasts in surface salinity between the tropical maxima and the equatorial minima give place at the moderate depth of 200 fathoms to a practically uniform salinity in all parts of the ocean.
• Jupiter was measured on eleven nights in the months of June and July 1794; from these measures Schur derives the values 35″39 and 37″.94 for the polar and equatorial diameter respectively, at mean distance, corresponding with a compression 1/14.44.
• The red type is peculiar to America, inhabiting every climate from polar to equatorial, and containing representatives of many stages of culture which had apparently developed without the aid or interference of people of any other race until the close of the 15th century.
• A well-marked trochosphere is formed by the development of an equatorial ciliated band; and subsequently, by the disproportionate growth of the lower hemisphere, the trochosphere becomes a veliger.
• The development of other species of Vitis, such as the curious succulent species of the Soudan and other parts of equatorial Africa, or the numerous kinds in India and Cochin China, is of course possible under suitable conditions; but it is obvious that an extremely long period must elapse before they can successfully compete with the product of many centuries.
• This was done in 1612 by Christoph Scheiner, who fully described his method of solar observation in the Rosa Ursina (1630), demonstrating very clearly and practically the advantages and disadvantages of using the camera, without a lens, with a single convex lens, and with a telescopic combination of convex object-glass and concave enlarging lens, the last arrangement being mounted with an adjustable screen or tablet on an equatorial stand.
• Disk to depths of 31 and 36 fathoms in the Sargasso Sea, but in the cold currents of the north and also in the equatorial current the depth of visibility was only from zi to 162 fathoms. to the tropical parts of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans the depth of visibility increases again to from 20 to 27 fathoms. Some allowance should be made for the elevation of the sun at the time of observation.
• Where surface water is banked up against the land, as by the equatorial and Gulf Stream drift currents, it appears to penetrate to very considerable depths; the escaping stream currents are at first of great vertical thickness and part of the water at their sources has a downward movement.
• This diminution of pressure, which continues as the heat increases till it reaches its maximum in July soon after the solstice, is followed by the corresponding development of the south-west monsoon; and as the barometric pressure is gradually restored, and becomes equalized within the tropics soon after the equinox in October, with the general fall of temperature north of the equator, the south-west winds fall off, and are succeeded by a north-east monsoon, which is developed during the winter months by the relatively greater atmospheric pressure which then occurs over Asia, as compared with the equatorial region.
• The arboreous forms which least require the humid and equable heat of the more truly tropical and equatorial climates, and are best able to resist the high temperatures and excessive drought of the northern Indian hot months from April to June, are certain Leguminosae, Bauhinia, Acacia, Butea and Dalbergia, Bombax, Shorea, Nauclea, Lagerstroemia, and Bignonia, a few bamboos and palms, with others which extend far beyond the tropic, and give a tropical aspect to the forest to the extreme northern border of the Indian plain.
• Various considerations throw doubt on Mr Moore’s theory, especially the almost entire absence of marine fossiliferous beds in the whole of equatorial Africa at a distance from the sea, of any remains of Jurassic faunas which might link the Tanganyika forms with those of undoubted Jurassic age in neighbouring regions.

 

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)