magnetic north

1. 1.

   the direction in which a compass needle points

   Synonymsnorthcompass north

   Broaderdirection

Questions about magnetic north

What does magnetic north mean?

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

What is another word for magnetic north?

Close synonyms include north, compass 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 magnetic north a common word?

magnetic 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.