Navigation

//nævɪˈɡeɪʃən// noun

noun ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The theory, practice and technology of charting a course for a road vehicle, ship, aircraft, or spaceship. uncountable, usually

    "An ocean-going yachtsman must be competent at night navigation"

  2. 2
    the work of a sailor wordnet
  3. 3
    Traffic or travel by vessel, especially commercial shipping. uncountable, usually
  4. 4
    the guidance of ships or airplanes from place to place wordnet
  5. 5
    A canal. countable, usually
Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    ship traffic wordnet
  2. 7
    The act of accessing different components of the user interface of software. uncountable, usually
  3. 8
    The process of finding a way through a difficult situation. uncountable, usually

Synonyms

All synonyms
helmsmanshipseafaringseamanshipaimastronavigationautomatic electronic navigation

Example

More examples

"It seems the navy jets had a major screw-up in navigation and they bombed their own troops by mistake."

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French navigation, from Latin nāvigātiōnem, accusative singular of nāvigātiō (“sailing, navigation”), from nāvigātus, perfect passive participle of nāvigō (“sail”). Morphologically navigate + -ion.

Related phrases

air navigationcelestial navigationfreedom of navigationgrid navigationhead of navigationhyperbolic navigationhyperbolic navigation systeminertial navigationinertial navigation systeminertial navigation unitinland navigationinternal navigation

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