Compass - compasses
From Hull AWE
There are two instruments, used for different purposes. (The first syllable is always pronounced like the verb 'come'; the second vowel is the shwa 'COME-pes', IPA: /ˈkʌm pəs/.)
- An instrument for drawing circles which has two legs is always known, in formal English at any rate, as a pair of compasses. Sometimes, slightly less formally, it is just compasses (the plural form of the noun) - but this is usually when the fuller form has been used first.
- The navigational instrument which is used to find North is a compass. This is true however it works, a magnetic compass, a gyro-compass or any other form.
- North, east, south and west (and such combinations as nor'-nor'east) are points of the compass.
An image that is famous to students of English Literature is John Donne's image of the togetherness of two individuals in love as
- If they be two, they are two so
- As stiff twin compasses as two,
- Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show
- To move, but doth, if th’other do.
- And though it in the centre sit,
- Yet when the other far doth roam,
- It leans, and hearkens after it,
- And grows erect as that comes home.
(From A Valediction Forbidding Mourning). Note that the poet regards the compasses (in current use 'pair of compasses') as "twin" and "two".