Compasses - Compass
A COMPASS is a suspended magnet so balanced that it may turn upon its pivot and orient itself with the North magnetic pole and thus (with the aid of tables and mathmetics), point out the true North.
COMPASSES is the word used to describe that instrument which draws circles and/or measures small distances; sometimes COMPASSES are called dividers. Like trousers and scissors. COMPASSES is always plural when meaning the instrument - except in six Grand Lodges of the United States which use the word COMPASS in the same way as their neighbors use COMPASSES.
COMPASSES is from the Latin Com (with) and passus (a step) - an instrument which is used "with a step" -- in other words, dividers. Masonically, it appears to be more a measuring than a circle drawing instrument. Although reference to its Masonic use includes "circumscribe desires." But its position, open sixty degrees upon a quadrant, as in the symbol of a Past Master, would seem to indicate that it is more as dividers than as an instrument to draw arcs of circles, that is important Masonically.
With the square it forms two of the three Great Lights of Masonry, and has become so universally recognized as a symbol of Freemasonry that courts have forbidden its unauthorized use or its being copyrighted or trademarked for commercial purposes.