GNOMON • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Gnomon

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Gnomon n.

(Dialing) The style or pin, which by its shadow, shows the hour of the day. It is usually set parallel to the earth's axis.

(Astron.) A style or column erected perpendicularly to the horizon, formerly used in astronomocal observations. Its principal use was to find the altitude of the sun by measuring the length of its shadow.

(Geom.) The space included between the boundary lines of two similar parallelograms, the one within the other, with an angle in common; as, the gnomon bcdefg of the parallelograms ac and af. The parallelogram bf is the complement of the parallelogram df.

The index of the hour circle of a globe.

See images of 'Gnomon'

Etymology of 'Gnomon'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Gnomon" Quotes from Famous Books

... the gnomon. This was not only early in use in the East, but it was found also among the Mexicans; the sole astronomical observations of the Peruvians were made by it; and we read that 1100 B.C., the Chinese found that, at a certain place, ...

— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... limits, some vestige may be discovered of the form and situation of Kamptchatka, of a people of hunters and fishermen, whose sledges were drawn by dogs, and whose habitations were buried in the earth. The Turks were ignorant of astronomy; but the observation taken by some learned Chinese, with a gnomon of eight feet, fixes the royal camp in the latitude of forty-nine degrees, and marks their extreme progress within three, or at least ten degrees, of the polar circle. [27] Among their southern conquests the most splendid was that ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... hence be considered as the gnomon of a vast sun dial, the shadow projected from which on a certain day would point out the road to the centre of ...

— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... well kept, bordered with mignonette, twisted about among the flower beds, and underneath the magnolia trees. In the centre was a little fountain in a stone basin green with moss, while just beyond, between the fountain and the pear trees, stood what was left of a sun dial, the bronze gnomon, green with the beatings of the weather, the figures on the half-circle of the dial ...

— The Octopus • Frank Norris

Words linked to "Gnomon" : indicator, sundial