lodestar

Noun

lodestar (plural lodestars)

1. A star used as a navigation reference, particularly a pole star such as Polaris.
   • Tho when her ways he could no more descry,
     But to and fro at disaventure strayd;
     Like as a ship, whose lodestarre, suddenly
     Covered with cloudes, her pilot hath dismayd1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
   • He was no wavering mariner; he had taken his course from a single lodestar, by which he had steered from the first day he had seen it in his heavens — the lodestar that had shone for him and would always shine.1905, Sidney Robinson Kennedy, The Lodestar, page 332
2. (figuratively) A guiding tenet or principle.
   • Selfe loue, to him ſelf tender, to the reſt tough, / Is, of iuſt iuſtice, neither roote, braunce, nor bough. / Loue (namely ſelfe loue) corruptibly growyng, / Is cheefe lodeſter of lets, in iuſtice ſhowing.1556, John Heywood, chapter 7, in The Spider and the Flie. […], London: […] Tho[mas] Powell, →OCLC; republished as A[dolphus] W[illiam] Ward, editor, The Spider and the Flie. […] (Publications of the...
   • May we not define its true aim to be that of awakening in the heart those feelings towards moral and religious objects, which like attractions drawing towards the great lodestars of existence, shall ever keep the life right and stedfast?1851, Mary Carpenter, “Reformatory Schools”, in The Prospective Review, volume 7, page 355
3. A calculated amount to award as attorney's fees derived by multiplying the reasonable number of hours spent working on a case by the reasonable hourly billing rate.
   • Many, though not all, of the objections to lodestars seem to us to be overstated.1992, Richard L. Marcus, Complex litigation: cases and materials on advanced civil procedure