dead reckoning.

Estimation of a current position from a known earlier position using heading, speed, elapsed time, and related movement data.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• navigate by dead reckoning
• a dead-reckoning estimate
• rely on dead reckoning

On the page

Without a usable radio fix, they continued by dead reckoning.

Her dead-reckoning estimate placed the wreck several miles north of the search grid.

Usage notes

Primary category: sci-fi. Forms: Uncountable. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.