theodolite

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There was an engineer taking the street level with a theodolite, and a gang of navvies with shovels digging like fury as if to dig out the back foundations of the hotel.

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Definitions (4)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. noun An optical instrument consisting of a small mounted telescope rotatable in horizontal and vertical planes, used to measure angles in surveying, meteorology, and navigation.

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

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Examples (50)

  • He also uses a pilot weather balloon theodolite, a device that looks like a video camera on steroids, with which he can track weather balloons that he launches. —  billingsgazette.com
  • The theodolite was a nine-inch one and weighed many pounds.
  • Here the theodolite was fixed. —  Rivers of Ice
  • We may therefore note here that when, on the following day, the theodolite was re-fixed, and the man of science and his amateur friend had applied their respective eyes to the telescope, they were assured beyond a doubt that the stakes had moved_, some more and some less, while the "Dook's nose," of course, remained hard and fast as the rock of which it was composed. —  Rivers of Ice
  • Seeing B----'s jointed and brass-mounted fishing-pole, he took it for a theodolite, and supposed that we had been on a surveying expedition. —  The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. New Latin theodolitus, theodelitus.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Formerly theodelite; sometimes theodelet; G. Danish theodolit; = French théodolite = Spanish teodolita = Italian teodolito (all from English); from New Latin *theodolitus, first in the form theodelitus (L. Digges, “Pantometria,” 1571), defined as “a circle divided in 360 grades or degrees, or a semicircle parted in 180 portions”; origin unknown. The word has a Greek semblance, but no obvious Greek basis. It has been variously explained: (a) from Greek θεᾶσθαι, see, + ὁδός, way, + λιτός, smooth, even, plain; (b) from Greek θεᾶσθαι, see, + δολιχός, long; (c) from Greek θεῖν, run, + δολιχός, long; (d) from Greek θεᾶσθαι, see (θέα, a seeing), + δοῦλος, slave; (e) “the O delitus” or “deletus,” i. e. the O crossed out, a fanciful name imagined to have been given in view of the circle marked off in degrees by numerous diameters, giving the effect of a circle or “O” erased; with other equally futile conjectures. (f) A recent explanation makes it a corrupt form of alidade.
 

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/θəˈɑdəlaɪt/
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