noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   An instrument formerly used at sea for taking the altitudes of heavenly bodies, later replaced by the sextant.

   "with a Forestaff, take the Altitude of the North Star"

Synonyms

All synonyms

cross staffcross-staff

Example

More examples

"with a Forestaff, take the Altitude of the North Star"

Etymology

From fore- + staff.

Related phrases

heavenly body

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.