pole-star
English
[edit]Noun
[edit]pole-star (plural pole-stars)
- Alternative form of pole star
- 1817, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “[Satyrane’s Letters.] Letter II. (To a Lady.)”, in Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, volume II, London: Rest Fenner, […], →OCLC, pages 214–215:
- But it [our hotel] has one great advantage for a stranger, by being in the market place, and the next neighbour of the huge church of St. Nicholas: […] A better pole-star could scarcely be desired.
- 1837 August 31, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar. An Oration Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837.”, in J[ames] E[lliot] Cabot, editor, Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Emerson’s Complete Works; I), Riverside edition, London: The Waverley Book Company, published 1883, →OCLC, page 84:
- Who can doubt that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years?
- 1889 June–November, Hall Caine, “Strong Knots of Love”, in The Bondman. A New Saga. […], volume II (The Book of Michael Sunlocks), London: William Heinemann, published January 1890, →OCLC, page 118:
- Love was her pole-star. What was Jason's? Only the blankness of despair.