great-circle sailing

[ greyt-sur-kuhl ]

noun

, Navigation.

1. sailing between two points more or less according to an arc of a great circle, in practice almost always using a series of rhumb lines of different bearings to approximate the arc, whose own bearing changes constantly unless it coincides with a meridian or the equator.

Example Sentences

Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely.

From Project Gutenberg