Word.ws English Dictionary

sextants

sextants is the plural of sextant.

Meaning of sextant

Noun

sextant (plural sextants)

  1. A navigational device for deriving angular distances between objects so as to determine latitude and longitude.
    • […] I can do more with a Quadrant, Sextant or Octant, of 1 foot Radius, furniſhed with Teleſcopical Sights and Screws, then ^([sic]) can poſſibly be done with any other Inſtrument, furniſhed only with Common Sights, though 10, 20, 30, nay threeſcore foot Radius; […]1674, Robert Hooke, Animadversions on the Firſt Part of the Machina Coelestis of the […] Aſtronomer Johannes Hevelius […] , page 43
  2. One sixth of a circle or disc; a sector with an angle of 60°.
  3. One of six groups of adjacent teeth, excluding the wisdom teeth.
  4. A radial cell division of segments in three series, a sixth part of the original.

See all 5 meanings of sextant

Questions about sextants

What is sextants the plural of?
Sextants is the plural of sextant.

Words near sextants in the dictionary

  1. sextan
  2. sextans
  3. sextant
  4. sextantal
  5. sextantes
  6. sextants
  7. sextape
  8. Sextard
  9. sextaries
  10. sextarii
  11. sextarius

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sextants (page history and authors); sextant (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: “sextants.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sextants. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.