sextant
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5++LDOCE 5++sex·tant /ˈsekstənt/ noun [countable] TMa tool for measuring angles between stars in order to calculate the position of a ship or aircraft 六分仪〔用于测量星与星之间的角度以计算船或飞机的位置〕
Examples from the Corpus
sextant• That was one of the problems of using the piste and a sextant.• Even Powell, constantly consulting sextant and compass, felt flummoxed.• Because of the track, navigation had been easy and I had been leaving my sextant in the Land Rover.• Once, Billy Hawkins got up in the middle of dinner, walked to the boats, and pulled out the sextant.• So I forgot about him, at least until that evening when I gave Ellen some practice with the sextant.• You had to be able to fix your position just like a ship at sea, with sextant and star charts.Origin sextant (1500-1600) Modern Latin sextans “sixth part of a circle”, from Latin sextus “sixth”sex·tant nounChineseSyllable
tool Corpus measuring in for stars order a to angles between
sextant
sex‧tant /ˈsekstənt/
noun [countable]
sex‧tant /ˈsekstənt/
noun [countable] Date: 1500-1600
Language: Modern Latin
Origin: sextans 'sixth part of a circle', from Latin sextus 'sixth'
a tool for measuring angles between stars in order to calculate the position of a ship or aircraft
Language: Modern Latin
Origin: sextans 'sixth part of a circle', from Latin sextus 'sixth'