North-Northeast, a Secondary Point of the Compass Rose

North-northeast is a bearing of 22.5 degrees, one of the sixteen points that result from bisecting the eight principal directions, and one of the thirty-two points of the full compass rose used in navigation. The thirty-two-point rose is a European development of the medieval and early modern period, growing out of the wind-roses of the Mediterranean and reaching its familiar form with the widespread use of the magnetic compass from the twelfth century onward; the practice of naming all thirty-two points in order, boxing the compass, was a standard test of a seaman's competence and survived in training into the twentieth century, when degrees replaced points for most purposes. Secondary points of this kind belong to navigation and surveying rather than to any symbolic system: no major cosmological tradition assigns a distinct meaning to a sixteenth of the circle, and the atlas records them for completeness of the compass rather than because a doctrine attaches to them.