quintant
quintant noun: an instrument used for measuring angular distance, capable of measuring angles of up to 72 or 144 degrees.
Noun
quintant (plural quintants)
- An instrument used for measuring angular distance, capable of measuring angles of up to 72 or 144 degrees.
- In former days octants, quintants and quadrants were in general use. The only basic difference between these instruments and the sextant is in the length of the arc.1944, Bart J[an] Bok, Frances W[oodworth] Wright, Basic Marine Navigation, Boston, M.A.; […]: Houghton Mifflin Company, page 242
- McCarthy, it may be noted, had escaped when the Andamans were invaded, in a twelve-person party aboard a launch. He had navigated the party as far as Ceylon using a hydrographic quintant in lieu of a magnetic compass.1978, Ian Trenowden, Operations Most Secret, London: William Kimber, page 62
- A fifth of a circle.
- Sectors are particularly denominated from the proportional part of the circle they contain; thus, a quadrant contains a 4th part of the circle; a quintant, the 5th part; a sextant, the 6th part; an octant, the 8th part; &c.1819, Robert Patterson, A Treatise of Practical Arithmetic: Intended for the Use of Schools; In Two Parts, Pittsburgh, P.A.: […] R. Patterson and Lambdin, page 85
- An inspection of this diagram will show at once that as far as spine locomotion is concerned Lytechinus may creep in any direction with apparent indifference. That this indifference is probably a real one is shown more clearly in Fig. 2 in which is plotted for each of the five ambulacral quintants...1936, G[eorge] H[oward] Parker, Direction and Means of Locomotion in the Regular Sea-urchin Lytechinus, page 201
Examples of quintant in a sentence
- Accuracy was ensured by combining the ancient quintant and chart used for two hundred years on the river and an aging echo-sounder.2015, Laura Bear, Navigating Austerity: Currents of Debt Along a South Asian River, Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page...
- That this indifference is probably a real one is shown more clearly in Fig. 2 in which is plotted for each of the five ambulacral quintants the instances of creeping falling within each one.1936, G[eorge] H[oward] Parker, Direction and Means of Locomotion in the Regular Sea-urchin Lytechinus, page 201:
- The dome rests on five pylons, equally spaced at 72°; two of the five quintants embrace the office building.1959 September, “Moving Day for the American Society for Metals”, in Metal Progress, volume 76, number 3, Metals Park, O.H.: American...
Forms of quintant
| plural | quintants |
|---|
Origin of quintant
Borrowed from Latin quintantem, accusative singular of quīntāns (“fifth part of something, fifth”).
Questions about quintant
- What does quintant mean?
- Quintant means an instrument used for measuring angular distance, capable of measuring angles of up to 72 or 144 degrees.
- How do you use quintant in a sentence?
- Accuracy was ensured by combining the ancient quintant and chart used for two hundred years on the river and an aging echo-sounder.
- What part of speech is quintant?
- Quintant is a noun.
- What is the plural of quintant?
- The plural of quintant is quintants.
Words near quintant in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: quintant (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: “quintant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/quintant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.