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A sextant is a tool that sailors — and, later, people flying aircraft — use to find where they are. You look through it at the sun or a star and measure how high it sits above the sea-line (the horizon). From that angle, plus the time, you can work out the ship’s or plane’s position. Dictionaries sometimes say it measures angles between stars; that can happen, but the classic job is sun-or-star to horizon. It is called a sextant because its scale covers a sixth of a circle, 60 degrees (Latin sextāns, a sixth). It is a specialist word: ships, history, museums, old sea stories. GPS has taken over most of the daily work, though actually naval schools still teach the sextant, because a box of electronics can fail and the sky does not.
六分儀（航海、航空用來測太陽或星星的高度，再算出船或飛機位置的儀器）。
組成From Latin sextāns, “a sixth” (a sixth of a circle is 60 degrees, which is the span of the tool’s scale).
同家族的字
- sextetboth from Latin for six; a sextet is a group of six
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Sextantname
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astronomynatural-sciencesThe constellation Sextans.
sextantnoun/ˈsɛk.stənt/
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nauticaltransportA 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; […]
- I took our position every morning with my crude sextant; but the results were always most unsatisfactory.
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geometrymathematicssciencesOne sixth of a circle or disc; a sector with an angle of 60°.
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dentistrymedicinesciencesOne of six groups of adjacent teeth, excluding the wisdom teeth.
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biologybotanynatural-sciencesA radial cell division of segments in three series, a sixth part of the original.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。