A ratio in geometry

Usage examples of secant.

Seated at the same table as herself was a skilful sailor, using logarithms, secants and cosecants, polar distances and hour angles, as if he were in some university class-room.

So, even though braking would not be required until the ship reached the balk line ten days hence, Gorgas ordered the Flip when they reached the median of the grand secant and hosted the traditional meal that very evening.

They saw little of Mr Martin for the rest of the day, and sometimes it seemed that he was as eager as his pupils to abandon sines, tangents and secants: he was in fact arranging his very large collection of the Brazilian coleoptera, hastily gathered and only now revealing its full wealth of new species, new genera, and even new families.

Remotely he heard the boy tell the nature of a secant, a cosecant, a tangent and cotangent, a sine and its fellow.

The next morning the blackboard was present, fixed by thumbscrews within easy reach of the Captain's hand, and from it the boys were taught, with words and diagrams, the nature of sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant, the relations between them, and their value in helping to find your position in a prodigious ocean, no shore, no landmark for ten thousand miles.

In spite of his dear friend Queenie’s patient explanations of tangents, secants and sines, he had never had a really firm grasp of the principles of spherical trigonometry.

In spite of his dear friend Queenie's patient explanations of tangents, secants and sines, he had never had a really firm grasp of the principles of spherical trigonometry.