zenith
pronunciation
How to pronounce zenith in British English:
UK [ˈzenɪθ]
How to pronounce zenith in American English:
US [ˈzinɪθ]
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- Noun:
- the point above the observer that is directly opposite the nadir on the imaginary sphere against which celestial bodies appear to be projected
Word Origin
- zenith
- zenith: [14] Arabic samt arrās means literally ‘path over the head’. Samt ‘path, road’ made its way via Old Spanish zenit and Old French cenit into English as zenith, bringing with it the metaphorical application to the ‘point in the sky directly overhead’. The plural of samt, sumūt, is the ultimate source of English azimuth [14].=> azimuth
- zenith (n.)
- "point of the heavens directly overhead at any place," late 14c., from Old French cenith (Modern French zénith), from Medieval Latin cenit, senit, bungled scribal transliterations of Arabic samt "road, path," abbreviation of samt ar-ras, literally "the way over the head." Letter -m- misread as -ni-. The Medieval Latin word could as well be influenced by the rough agreement of the Arabic term with classical Latin semita "sidetrack, side path" (notion of "thing going off to the side"), from se- "apart" + *mi-ta-, suffixed zero-grade form of PIE root *mei- (1) "to change" (see mutable). Figurative sense of "highest point or state" is from c. 1600.
Antonym
Example
- 1. The battle of agincourt marks the zenith of mediaeval longbow technology .
- 2. Many early evolutionary biologists ( though not darwin himself ) thought that just as man was a risen ape , so white , european man was the zenith of humanity , and that people from other parts of the world were necessarily inferior .
- 3. Their astronomical system was thus closely associated with the concept of the meridian ( the great circle of the celestial sphere passing through the pole star and the observer 's zenith ) , and they determined systematically the culminations and lower transits ( meridian passages ) of these circumpolar stars .
- 4. Victoria lent her name to the victorian era , a time when the united kingdom 's power was at its zenith .
- 5. The popular conviction that fires are an unqualified evil reached its zenith after a third of yellowstone park in the us was destroyed by fire in 1988 .