compass card

American

noun

Navigation.

a circular card with magnets attached to its underside, the face divided on its rim into points of the compass, degrees clockwise from north, or both, and floating or suspended from a pivot so as to rotate freely.

compass card British

noun

a compass in the form of a card that rotates so that "0°" or "North" points to magnetic north

"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

Etymology

Origin of compass card

First recorded in 1870–75

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

compass card

I actually prefer trying to hold a number on its screen rather than trying to keep a compass card in alignment.

From Time Magazine Archive

But they never look at the instrument board on a line run without seeing on the compass card a sharp reminder of a TWA deficiency: all its routes run east and west.

From Time Magazine Archive

The bos'un did not think so, and casting an eye aloft at the canvas now beginning to fill, and then at the compass card, prepared to air his theory of the malady.

From In Strange Company A Story of Chili and the Southern Seas by Guy Newell Boothby

Where this string cuts the compass card, will be the direction of your course.

From Lectures in Navigation by Ernest Gallaudet Draper

By then proceeding as before, the course indicated on the compass card will be the compass course to sail.

From Lectures in Navigation by Ernest Gallaudet Draper

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023