Word.ws English Dictionary

forestaff

forestaff noun: an instrument formerly used at sea for taking the altitudes of heavenly bodies, later replaced by the sextant.

Noun

forestaff (plural forestaffs or forestaves)

  1. An instrument formerly used at sea for taking the altitudes of heavenly bodies, later replaced by the sextant.
    • with a Forestaff, take the Altitude of the North Star1722, Andrew Wakely, The Mariner's Compass
    Synonyms:
    cross-staff

Synonyms of forestaff

Forms of forestaff

pluralforestaffs
pluralforestaves

Origin of forestaff

From fore- + staff.

Questions about forestaff

What does forestaff mean?
Forestaff means an instrument formerly used at sea for taking the altitudes of heavenly bodies, later replaced by the sextant.
What part of speech is forestaff?
Forestaff is a noun.
What is the plural of forestaff?
The plural of forestaff is forestaffs.

Words near forestaff in the dictionary

  1. forest-bills
  2. forest-blue
  3. forest-blues
  4. forest-born
  5. Foresta
  6. forestaff
  7. forestaffs
  8. forestage
  9. forestaged
  10. forestages
  11. forestaging

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forestaff (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.

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Cite this entry: “forestaff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/forestaff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.