sextant

From Latin sextāns.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɛk.stənt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛkstənt

sextant (plural sextants)

2. (nautical) A navigational device for deriving angular distances between objects so as to determine latitude and longitude.
   • 1674, Robert Hooke, Animadversions on the Firſt Part of the Machina Coelestis of the […] Aſtronomer Johannes Hevelius […] ‎^[1], page 43:

     […] I can do more with a Quadrant, Sextant or Octant, of 1 foot Radius, furniſhed with Teleſcopical Sights and Screws, then ^[sic] can poſſibly be done with any other Inſtrument, furniſhed only with Common Sights, though 10, 20, 30, nay threeſcore foot Radius; […]

   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:

     I took our position every morning with my crude sextant; but the results were always most unsatisfactory.

   • 1981, Saul J. Adelman, Benjamin Adelman, Bound for the Stars, →ISBN, page 227:

     Moskowitz and Devereux have designed a hyperaccurate sextant for interstellar navigation based upon the design of the sextant used by the Apollo astronauts.

4. (geometry) One sixth of a circle or disc; a sector with an angle of 60°.
6. (dentistry) One of six groups of adjacent teeth, excluding the wisdom teeth.
8. (botany) A radial cell division of segments in three series, a sixth part of the original.

• exstant

sextant m inan

1. sextant

• IPA^(key): /sɛk.stɑ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

sextant m (plural sextants)

1. sextant

• “sextant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Borrowed from French sextant.

sextant m (plural sextanți)

1. sextant

sextant c

1. (nautical) a sextant

• sextant in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• sextant in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• sextant in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)