Mercator projection: Meaning and Definition of

Merca'tor projec'tion

Pronunciation: [key]
  1. a conformal projection on which any rhumb line is represented as a straight line, used chiefly in navigation, though the scale varies with latitude and areal size and the shapes of large areas are greatly distorted.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.