kelet

Kelet is the Hungarian noun for the cardinal direction east. It denotes the direction toward which the sun rises in the northern hemisphere and serves as the counterpart to nyugat (west). In everyday use, kelet appears in navigation, cartography, and descriptions of locations, as in keleti irány (the eastern direction), keleti oldal (the eastern side), or keleti puszták (eastern plains). The term is also used in historical and geographical contexts to refer to the East as a region or concept, such as in discussions of East–West relations or travel and mapping.

The word figures prominently in Hungarian toponyms and institutions. The best-known example is Keleti pályaudvar, Budapest’s main eastern railway station, whose name literally means Eastern Station. The adjective form keleti is used in many compound names, such as keleti határ (eastern border) or keleti ország-rész (eastern region). In general, kelet functions as a productive root in place names and descriptive phrases across the language.

Pronunciation is typically ke-let, with the primary stress on the first syllable. The term is native to Hungarian and is widely understood in standard usage, with translations limited to the direction sense unless described more broadly as “the East” in a historical or regional context.