sextant

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“
Among other things, was a large box, sheathed with iron and stoutly clamped, containing a keg partly filled with powder, the half of an old cutlass, a pouch of bullets, and a case for a sextant--a brass plate on the lid, with the maker's name.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A navigational instrument containing a graduated 60-degree arc, used for measuring the altitudes of celestial bodies to determine latitude and longitude.
  2. noun See Sextans.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • Tight Pants and Fancy Mustache were surveying the grove with an old-fashioned transit and sextant, and the accordion was writing down the measurements. —  Futures Imperfect
  • Renny got busy with an astral sextant, the Maggie, and stuck his head up in the astro dome. —  145 - The Ten Ton Snakes
  • He used the sextant, as Andersen had taught him, to get a position that let him add one more black ink-dot to the line of black dots on the blank page that was to be their map. —  F ;SF; - vol 088 issue 02 - February 1995
  • Let's see if we can find where we are The usual navigating instruments--sextant and chronometer--were in the captain's cabin. —  064 - The Submarine Mystery
  • I replied, "Just like everyone else, First Sergeant, with a star chart and a sextant," where upon the discussion devolved into discovering just what a sextant was … —  Kit Up
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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. New Latin sextāns, sextant-, from Latin, sixth part (so called because the instrument's arc is a sixth of a circle), from sextus, sixth; see s(w)eks in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from French sextant = Spanish sextante = Portuguese sextante, seistante = Italian sestante, from Latin sextan (t-)s, a sixth part (of an as), from sextus, sixth, from sex, six. Cf. quadrant.
 

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/ˈsɛkstənt/
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