navigation

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The theory and practice of navigating, especially the charting of a course for a ship or aircraft.
• noun Travel or traffic by vessels, especially commercial shipping.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of navigating; the act of moving on water in ships or other vessels; sailing: as, the navigation of the northern seas; also, by extension, the act of “sailing” through the air in a balloon (see aërial navigation, below).
• noun The science or art of directing the course of vessels as they sail from one part of the world to another.
• noun Ships in general; shipping.
• noun An artificial waterway, or a part of a natural waterway that has been made navigable; a canal. Also navvy. See navvy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of navigating; the act of passing on water in ships or other vessels; the state of being navigable.
• noun The science or art of conducting ships or vessels from one place to another, including, more especially, the method of determining a ship's position, course, distance passed over, etc., on the surface of the globe, by the principles of geometry and astronomy.
• noun The management of sails, rudder, etc.; the mechanics of traveling by water; seamanship.
• noun Poetic Ships in general.
• noun the act or art of sailing or floating in the air, as by means of airplanes or ballons; aviation; aëronautic.
• noun navigation on rivers, inland lakes, etc.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun uncountable The theory, practice and technology of charting a course for a ship, aircraft or a spaceship
• noun uncountable Traffic or travel by vessel, especially commercial shipping
• noun countable A canal

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the work of a sailor
• noun ship traffic
• noun the guidance of ships or airplanes from place to place