NADIR • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Nadir

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/nˈeɪdər/ Listen

noun

Nadir n.

That point of the heavens, or lower hemisphere, directly opposite the zenith; the inferior pole of the horizon; the point of the celestial sphere directly under the place where we stand.

The lowest point; the time of greatest depression. "The seventh century is the nadir of the human mind in Europe."

Nadir of the sun (Astron.), the axis of the conical shadow projected by the earth.

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Etymology of 'Nadir'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Nadir" Quotes from Famous Books

... the ball or the billiard-room, the card or the hazard-table, the turf or the chase; for in all of these does Cheltenham abound. From the cercle de la basse to the cercle de la haute, from the nadir to the zenith, 'I know ye, and have at ye all'—ye busy, buzzing, merry, amorous groups of laughter-loving, ogling, ambling, gambling ...

— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... years hence, and then going to be plucked for a muff, for I know more navigation than you do. Look here, Guy Fawkes: when the sun is in right declination forty-four degrees south, how would you find the square root of the nadir?" ...

— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... to nadir with the knowledge that he had failed ... failed the Secret Service and the Corps, failed his father, failed the Guddus, failed himself. Curiously, perhaps, at that moment the thought of failure was far more important to him than the ...

— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... blazing with shuttlings of lambent flame. From nadir to zenith the mystic light shivered and sheeted. Never had Lanigan beheld a more vivid display of the phenomenon of the aurora borealis. He seemed to be waiting for something. He sighed and ...

— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... board the same revolting scenes which marked the lowest depths of human debasement in the day of Rome's greatest depravity. To feed the rum-inflamed lusts of men, the managers of these craters of bestiality and depravity have nightly exhibitions which mark the nadir to which abandoned womanhood can sink. No one can enter those dens of infamy without inhaling the contagion of moral death. The records of the commissioners who investigated the concert halls and low theatres sickens one much as the frightful revelation of Mr. Stead ...

— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

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