lodestar

plural lodestars · alternative lode starre · alternative loadstar

1. A star used as a navigation reference, particularly a pole star such as Polaris.

   Tho when her ways he could no more descry, But to and fro at disaventure strayd; Like as a ship, whose lodestarre, suddenly Covered with cloudes, her pilot hath dismayd

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

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   He was no wavering mariner; he had taken his course from a single lodestar, by which he had steered from the first day he had seen it in his heavens — the lodestar that had shone for him and would always shine.

   1905, Sidney Robinson Kennedy, The Lodestar, page 332

2. figurativelyA guiding tenet or principle.

   We need a new lodestar, a new map of the world that once again includes a distant, uncharted continent—“Utopia.”

   2017, Rutger Bregman, chapter 1, in Elizabeth Manton, transl., Utopia for Realists, Kindle edition, Bloomsbury Publishing

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   Selfe loue, to him ſelf tender, to the reſt tough, / Is, of iuſt iuſtice, neither roote, braunce, nor bough. / Loue (namely ſelfe loue) corruptibly growyng, / Is cheefe lodeſter of lets, in iuſtice ſhowing.

   1556, John Heywood, chapter 7, in The Spider and the Flie. […], London: […] Tho[mas] Powell, →OCLC; republished as A[dolphus] W[illiam] Ward, editor, The Spider and the Flie. […] (Publications of the Spenser Society, New Series; 6), Manchester: […] [Charles E. Simms] for the Spenser Society, 1894, →OCLC, page 50

   May we not define its true aim to be that of awakening in the heart those feelings towards moral and religious objects, which like attractions drawing towards the great lodestars of existence, shall ever keep the life right and stedfast?

   1851, Mary Carpenter, “Reformatory Schools”, in The Prospective Review, volume 7, page 355

   With export controls still restricting the sale of the most advanced chips to China and its university students increasingly unwelcome in the U.S., technological self-sufficiency has become Beijing’s lodestar.

   2025 December 11, Charlie Campbell, Andrew R. Chow and Billy Perrigo, “The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year”, in Time

3. lawA calculated amount to award as attorney's fees derived by multiplying the reasonable number of hours spent working on a case by the reasonable hourly billing rate.

   Many, though not all, of the objections to lodestars seem to us to be overstated.

   1992, Richard L. Marcus, Complex litigation: cases and materials on advanced civil procedure