West is one of the four cardinal directions, and it's where the sun sets each evening. If you stand facing the sunset, you're looking west. On a map, west is to the left, opposite east.

Throughout history, “the West” has meant different things. For ancient Romans, lands to their west like Gaul (modern France) were “the West.” For centuries, Europeans used “the West” to mean Western Europe and its cultural traditions. When the United States expanded in the 1800s, Americans heading toward the Pacific Ocean were going west or moving out to “the West,” establishing ranches, farms, and new towns in places that became states like Texas, Colorado, and California. This period of westward expansion deeply shaped American history and culture.

Today, people sometimes use “the West” or “the Western world” to refer to countries in Europe and North America that share certain democratic traditions and cultural connections, though this usage varies depending on context.

The word also appears in compound directions: northwest (between north and west), southwest (between south and west), and due west (exactly west, not angled at all). When sailors or pilots say they're heading 270 degrees, they mean due west, since directions can be measured in degrees around a compass.