sextant

[ sek-stuhnt ]

noun
  1. an astronomical instrument used to determine latitude and longitude at sea by measuring angular distances, especially the altitudes of sun, moon, and stars.

  2. Sextant, Astronomy. the constellation Sextans.

Origin of sextant

1
First recorded in 1590–1600; from Latin sextant- (stem of sextāns ) sixth part of a unit; see sext1, -ant

Words that may be confused with sextant

Words Nearby sextant

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use sextant in a sentence

  • Then, he could actually use a sextant, and his way of working out his latitude was chaste and picturesque.

    The Chequers | James Runciman
  • A sextant for measuring the latitude of any place can be easily constructed as follows: While a board, 1 in.

  • I had with me an admirable Hadleys sextant, and an artificial horizon, and I corrected the mean refraction of the suns rays.

  • While Dick was recovering the sextant, Carl was making Townsend as comfortable as possible on the floor of the car.

  • By six o'clock the schooner was well out to sea, and as it grew dark the Captain came on deck with his sextant.

British Dictionary definitions for sextant

sextant

/ (ˈsɛkstənt) /


noun
  1. an optical instrument used in navigation and consisting of a telescope through which a sighting of a heavenly body is taken, with protractors for determining its angular distance above the horizon or from another heavenly body

  2. a sixth part of a circle having an arc which subtends an angle of 60°

Origin of sextant

1
C17: from Latin sextāns one sixth of a unit

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for sextant

sextant

[ sĕkstənt ]


  1. An instrument containing a graduated 60° arc and a movable pivoted arm corresponding to the radius of the arc's circle, used in celestial navigation to measure the altitude of a celestial body in order to determine the observer's latitude and longitude. A horizontally mounted telescope and two small mirrors are arranged so that the observer can, by moving the pivoted arm, sight the horizon and the reflected image of the celestial body in the same line, giving a reading along the arc that is used to look up the observer's position in a published table.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.