Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An instrument used by surveyors for taking angles.
- noun A device for measuring the length of the tire of a wheel, consisting of a wheel of known circumference, which is rolled over the tire.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A surveying instrument, for taking horizontal angles and bearings; a surveyor's compass. It consists of a compass whose needle plays over a circle graduated to 360°, and of a horizontal brass bar at the ends of which are standards with narrow slits for sighting, supported on a tripod by a ball and socket joint.
- noun A graduated wheel for measuring tires; a tire circle.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun surveying An instrument used to measure
horizontal angles , consisting of abrass circle and an index, all of one piece.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Employed by the Board of Ordnance, William Roy began mapping the Highlands in 1747, pushing a surveyor's wheel and using a simple kind of theodolite called a circumferentor.
Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey by Rachel Hewitt - review Ian Pindar 2010
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A circumferentor is, according to the OED: Surveying.
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The ravines are deep, and the sides of the hills are covered with the same stone, of which a pile was erected on the summit of the head to mark the spot where the circumferentor was placed.
Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 — Volume 1 Phillip Parker King
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Kater's pocket compass [Note: A most valuable instrument, combining all the advantages of the circumferentor, without being so liable to be damaged and put out of order by carriage.], with the addition of an excellent sextant, pocket chronometer, and artificial horizon.
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales John Oxley 1804
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Augustine Washington had been a surveyor, and George had access to his father’s instruments: a circumferentor an eighteenth-century predecessor of the theodolite and an expensive precision instrument, chains, drawing boards and instruments, and so on.
George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011
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Augustine Washington had been a surveyor, and George had access to his father’s instruments: a circumferentor an eighteenth-century predecessor of the theodolite and an expensive precision instrument, chains, drawing boards and instruments, and so on.
George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011
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Augustine Washington had been a surveyor, and George had access to his father’s instruments: a circumferentor an eighteenth-century predecessor of the theodolite and an expensive precision instrument, chains, drawing boards and instruments, and so on.
George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011
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Augustine Washington had been a surveyor, and George had access to his father’s instruments: a circumferentor an eighteenth-century predecessor of the theodolite and an expensive precision instrument, chains, drawing boards and instruments, and so on.
George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011
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4 A most valuable instrument, combining all the advantages of the circumferentor, without being so liable to be damaged and put out of order by carriage.
Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales 2003
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They had been obliged to escape so rapidly that Captain Clark lost his compass [that is, circumferentor] and umbrella, Chaboneau left his gun, with Captain Lewis 'wiping-rod, shot-pouch, and tomahawk, and the Indian woman had just time to grasp her child, before the net in which it lay at her feet was carried down the current. "
First Across the Continent; The Story of The Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6 1805
qms commented on the word circumferentor
As Fortune’s wheel turns on its center
The wise need no circumferentor.
Your rising has meant
A fatal descent -
Let cries of the crushed be your mentor.
January 23, 2019