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Nadir always seemed very obviously Arabic to me. Weirdly, I first encountered it in a book on category theory, and only after that did I start to hear it used i
by xanderlewis 2y ago
Nadir always seemed very obviously Arabic to me. Weirdly, I first encountered it in a book on category theory, and only after that did I start to hear it used in everyday English to mean the opposite of 'apex'.
- samatman 2y agoIt's the opposite of zenith, another word ultimately derived from Arabic. The difference between an apex and a zenith is that an apex exists as a point in space, while a zenith is a direction, with no fixed point which may be said to be "the" zenith. There are other differences given that apex has a few related meanings, but this is the main one.
- xanderlewis 2y agoAh, yes. I knew it wasn’t quite the right word.