compass

English

Compasses for drawing and cutting
Magnetic compass

Pronunciation

  • Audio (US)(file)
  • enPR: kŭmʹpəs, IPA(key): /ˈkʌm.pəs/
  • Rhymes: -ʌmpəs

Etymology 1

From Middle English compas (“a circle, circuit, limit, form, a mathematical instrument”), from Old French compas, from Medieval Latin compassus (“a circle, a circuit”), from Latin com- (“together”) + passus (“a pace, step, later a pass, way, route”); see pass, pace.

Noun

compass (plural compasses)

  1. A magnetic or electronic device used to determine the cardinal directions (usually magnetic or true north).
    • John Locke
      He that first discovered the use of the compass did more for the supplying and increase of useful commodities than those who built workhouses.
  2. A pair of compasses (a device used to draw an arc or circle).
    • Jonathan Swift
      to fix one foot of their compass wherever they please
  3. (music) The range of notes of a musical instrument or voice.
    • Shakespeare
      You would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass.
  4. (obsolete) A space within limits; area.
    • 1763, M. Le Page Du Pratz, History of Louisiana (PG), page 47:
      In going up the Missisippi [sic], we meet with nothing remarkable before we come to the Detour aux Anglois, the English Reach: in that part the river takes a large compass.
    • Addison
      Their wisdom […] lies in a very narrow compass.
    • 1913, D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, chapter 14
      Clara thought she had never seen him look so small and mean. He was as if trying to get himself into the smallest possible compass.
  5. (obsolete) An enclosing limit; boundary; circumference.
    within the compass of an encircling wall
  6. Moderate bounds, limits of truth; moderation; due limits; used with within.
    • Sir J. Davies
      In two hundred years before (I speak within compass), no such commission had been executed.
  7. Scope.
    • Wordsworth
      the compass of his argument
    • 1748, David Hume, Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral, Oxford University Press (1973), section 8:
      There is a truth and falsehood in all propositions on this subject, and a truth and falsehood, which lie not beyond the compass of human understanding.
    • 1844, Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia
      How very commonly we hear it remarked that such and such thoughts are beyond the compass of words! I do not believe that any thought, properly so called, is out of the reach of language.
  8. (obsolete) A passing round; circuit; circuitous course.
    • Bible, 2 Kings iii. 9
      They fetched a compass of seven days' journey.
    • Shakespeare
      This day I breathed first; time is come round, / And where I did begin, there shall I end; / My life is run his compass.
Synonyms
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Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.

Etymology 2

From Middle English compassen (“to go around, make a circuit, draw a circle, contrive, intend”), from Old French compasser; from the noun; see compass as a noun.

Verb

compass (third-person singular simple present compasses, present participle compassing, simple past and past participle compassed)

  1. To surround; to encircle; to environ; to stretch round.
    • 1610, The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, act 5 scene 1
      Now all the blessings
      Of a glad father compass thee about!
    • 1899, Martha Frye Boggs, Jack Crews, page 237:
      Jack was called plucky, and he was, but it took all the strength of will that the slim, resolute engineer possessed, to hold him to his purpose, when he faced about and surveyed the unimpassive faces which compassed him.
  2. To go about or round entirely; to traverse.
  3. (dated) To accomplish; to reach; to achieve; to obtain.
    • 1763, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emilius; or, an essay on education, translated by M. Nugent, page 117:
      [...] they never find ways sufficient to compass that end.
    • 1816, Catholicon: or, the Christian Philosopher, volume 3, from July to December 1816, page 56:
      [...] to settle the end of our action or disputation; and then to take fit and effectual means to compass that end.
    • 1857, Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time: from the Restoration of King Charles the Second to the Treaty of Peace at Utrecht in the Reign of Queen Anne, page 657:
      [...] and was an artful flatterer, when that was necessary to compass his end, in which generally he was successful.
    • 1921 November 23, The New Republic, volume 28, number 364, page 2:
      The immediate problem is how to compass that end: by the seizure of territory or by the cultivation of the goodwill of the people whose business she seeks.
  4. (dated) To plot; to scheme (against someone).
    • 1600, The Arraignment and Judgement of Captain Thomas Lee, published in 1809, by R. Bagshaw, in Cobbett's Complete Collection of State Trials, volume 1, page 1403–04:
      That he plotted and compassed to raise Sedition and Rebellion [...]
    • 1794 November 1, Speech of Mr. Erskine in Behalf of Hardy, published in 1884, by Chauncey Allen Goodrich, in Select British Eloquence, page 719:
      But it went beyond it by the loose construction of compassing to depose the King, [...]
    • 1915, The Wireless Age, volume 2, page 580:
      The Bavarian felt a mad wave of desire for her sweep over him. What scheme wouldn't he compass to mould that girl to his wishes.
Quotations
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Translations

Adverb

compass (comparative more compass, superlative most compass)

  1. (obsolete) In a circuit; round about.
    • 1658, Thomas Browne, Urne-Burial, Penguin (2005), →ISBN, page 9:
      Near the same plot of ground, for about six yards compasse were digged up coals and incinerated substances, […]

References

  • compass in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
  • compass in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
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