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.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (1)

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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