geographical mile

American  

noun

geographical miles plural

1. a unit of distance defined as the length of one minute of latitude or longitude at the equator: approximately 1855 meters or 2029 yards.

---

geographical mile British  

noun

1. a former name for nautical mile

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• geographical miles
  plural

Example Sentences

Indeed, in nautical parlance, the words knot and mile are synonyms, alluding to the geographical mile of 60′ to a degree of latitude.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Belcher, Edward, Sir

On the surface of the earth, at the equator, each side of this polygon would be one-sixtieth of a geographical mile, or 101.46 feet.

From Scientific American Supplement, No. 531, March 6, 1886 by Various

Kladen informs us that the sedimentary matter transported to the sea by the Rhine would amount to a cubic geographical mile in five thousand years.

From The Earth as Modified by Human Action by Marsh, George P.

To give an idea of the distances, I may mention that the post-stages were twelve Arabic miles asunder, which on this road are rather larger than an English geographical mile.

From Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 2 by Burton, Richard Francis, Sir

Mr. Kendall and I were employed in measuring a geographical mile on the small lake, preparatory to a series of observations on the velocity of sound.

From Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea by Franklin, John