Definition of "loadstar" [load•star]

• Variant of lodestar. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In The Match, 32-year-old Latitia Vane seeks to live as a single distinguished woman, in a house of her own, as “the patroness of arts, the encourager of genius, the loadstar in society” (1.2.687)."
• "Now, or in the not too distant future, it may be impossible operationally and philosophically to tell the difference between Arab al-Qa'ida and Afghan and Pakistani radical groups, which have as a loadstar the Pashtun militants who comprise the neo-Taliban on both sides of the border."
• "Separated from the Lady Isabelle, whose looks had been for so many days his loadstar, Quentin felt a strange vacancy and chillness of the heart, which he had not yet experienced in any of the vicissitudes to which his life had subjected him."