periplous

Noun

periplus (plural peripluses or peripli or periploi)

1. An account of a voyage, particularly those of Hanno and Arrian, recording ports and coastal landmarks.
   • Then follows a Periplus of the Euxine-Sea, which bears the name of Arrian, and was undoubtedly written by him in the time of Adrian, as the inſcription ſhews.1738, Pierre Bayle, John Peter Bernard, Thomas Birch, John Lockman [et al.], “Hudson (Dr. John)”, in A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, volume VI, London: Printed by James Bettenham, for...
2. A voyage along a coast.
   • In the great Ocean, California, its gulph, and the Vermilion Sea were known to Cortes; Cabrillo proceeded along the coast of New California as far as the 43d degree of north latitude; Galbi advanced to the 57th degree. Amidst so many real peripluses, Maldonado, Juan de Fuca, and Admiral de Fonte...1828, François-René de Chateaubriand, “Preface”, in Travels in America and Italy..., volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 39
3. (uncommon) Synonym of circuit: the path or distance around a coast.

   Synonyms:

   circuit

4. (uncommon) Synonym of circumnavigation: a voyage around an island or the world.
   • All the four books and the photograph are, in various degrees of literality or metaphoricity, about a periplus, the circumnavigation of an entire world, be that Homer's Mediterranean, Dante's hell, purgatory and paradise, Joyce's Dublin, or the cosmos of The Cantos, stretching across all the...1997, Manfred Pfister, “‘Sailing after Knowledge’: The Logbook Aesthetics of Pound's Cantos”, in Andreas Fischer, Martin Heusser, Thomas Herrmann, editors, Aspects of Modernism: Studies in Honour of...

   Synonyms:

   circumnavigation