ZENITH

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does zenith mean? 

• ZENITH (noun)
  The noun ZENITH has 1 sense:

1. the point above the observer that is directly opposite the nadir on the imaginary sphere against which celestial bodies appear to be projected

  Familiarity information: ZENITH used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ZENITH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The point above the observer that is directly opposite the nadir on the imaginary sphere against which celestial bodies appear to be projected

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

Hypernyms ("zenith" is a kind of...):

celestial point (a point in the heavens (on the celestial sphere))

Holonyms ("zenith" is a part of...):

celestial sphere; empyrean; firmament; heavens; sphere; vault of heaven; welkin (the apparent surface of the imaginary sphere on which celestial bodies appear to be projected)

Antonym:

nadir (the point below the observer that is directly opposite the zenith on the imaginary sphere against which celestial bodies appear to be projected)

Derivation:

zenithal (relating to or located at or near the zenith)

 Context examples 

Their heads were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The cloud-masses on the western horizon received the descending sun, and the circle of the sky turned to rose, while the zenith glowed with the same warm color.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

But I felt that my school had reached its zenith when, weeks ago, the Duke of Holdernesse sent Mr. James Wilder, his secretary, with intimation that young Lord Saltire, ten years old, his only son and heir, was about to be committed to my charge.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)