cross-staff
Noun. (nautical) An early navigational instrument, consisting of a wooden rod with a sliding crosspiece, used for measuring the altitude of a star; it developed into the sextant.This is an unmodified, but possibly outdated, definition from Wiktionary and used here under the Creative Commons license. Wiktionary is a great resource. If you like it too, please donate to Wikimedia.
This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.