Admiralty mile
- noun
- Archaic
- One Admiralty mile is equivalent to 6,080 feet.
Examples
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The ship logged exactly one Admiralty mile before reaching the buoy.
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The Admiralty mile is used primarily in nautical charts.
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Older naval charts often measure distances in Admiralty miles rather than nautical miles.
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Surveyors recorded the coastal length using the Admiralty mile during the 19th century.
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Older naval charts often measure distances in Admiralty miles rather than nautical miles.
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Surveyors recorded the coastal length using the Admiralty mile during the 19th century.
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One Admiralty mile is equivalent to 6,080 feet.
Synonyms
An old British unit of length equal to 6,080 feet
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound simply combines 'admiralty' (naval authority) with 'mile' (a unit of distance), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to a mile used by the Admiralty or for maritime navigation. While the exact numeric length (6,080 feet) cannot be deduced from the constituents, the basic compositional meaning (a naval/Admiralty mile) is transparent and cross-linguistically plausible.
Etymology
The term Admiralty mile comes from the British Admiralty, the navy office that set rules for sea maps. They used a bigger mile at sea to match older charts and ways of measuring, so an Admiralty mile means 'a longer distance than the regular mile'.