vbl. sb. [f. EAST + -ING1.]
1. Naut. ‘The course made good, or gained, to the eastward’ (Adm. Smyth).
1628. Digby, Voy. Medit. (1868), 91. For easting and westing, great diligence is required not to fall into error.
1684. Bucaniers Amer., II. (1698), 169. My whole easting I reckoned to be now 677 Leagues and 1/3 of a league.
1748. Anson, Voy., II. iv. (ed. 4), 233. Without hailing in for the main to secure our easting.
1781. Blagden, in Phil. Trans., LXXI. 339. We … made some easting to keep clear of the dangerous shoals.
1802. Playfair, Illustr. Hutton. The., 230. To compute from the observed bearings the amount of all the … easting or westing.
1860. L. Bilton, in Merc. Mar. Mag., VII. 289. I ran down my easting in 38° S.
2. An approach to an easterly direction; a sloping or veering eastwards. Of a wind or ocean current: A shifting eastward of the point of origin; easterly direction.
1835. Maury, Phys. Geog. Sea, vii. § 344. That diurnal rotation does impart easting to these winds there is no doubt.
1862. Dana, Man. Geol., 539. In Maine the courses [of the rock-groovings] have an unusual amount of easting.
1865. Pall Mall Gaz., 25 Aug., 11/1. This very gregale, much dreaded at Malta, has there decided easting in it, and may well have blown St. Paul from Crete thither.
3. Of a heavenly body: The reaching the eastern point of its apparent daily path.
1883. R. A. Proctor, Great Pyramid, iii. 139. The easting, southing, westing, and northing of heavenly bodies.
