compass north

1. 1.

   the direction in which a compass needle points

   Synonymsnorthmagnetic north

   Broaderdirection

Questions about compass north

What does compass north mean?

compass north means "the direction in which a compass needle points".

What is another word for compass north?

Close synonyms include north, magnetic north. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is compass north a common word?

compass north is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.