ded reckoning
ded reckoning is the alternative form of dead reckoning.
Meaning of dead reckoning
Noun
dead reckoning (countable and uncountable, plural dead reckonings)
- A method of estimating the position of a ship or aircraft by applying estimates of the distance and direction travelled from a previously known position. In respect to ships/boats, it excludes the effect of wind and current on the vessel.
- Earlier, airmail pilots relied almost entirely on visual navigation and dead reckoning, a method that sounds simple in theory, but required remarkable concentration and experience. A pilot would plot a route on a map, take a compass heading, estimate his airspeed, and calculate how long it should...2026 March 7, Sthitapragta Chakraborty, “America Once Built Giant Arrows to Guide Pilots Across the Country, and Some Still Exist Today”, in Skip Boring, archived from the original on 24 Jul 2026
Forms of ded reckoning
| plural | ded reckonings |
|---|
Origin of ded reckoning
From the mistaken idea that the dead in dead reckoning originated as an abbreviation of deduced or deductive.
Questions about ded reckoning
- What is ded reckoning the alternative form of?
- Ded reckoning is the alternative form of dead reckoning.
Words near ded reckoning in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ded reckoning (page history and authors); dead reckoning (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “ded reckoning.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ded_reckoning. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.