ZENITH • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Zenith

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/zˈinəθ/ /zˈinɪθ/ Listen

noun

Zenith n.

1.

That point in the visible celestial hemisphere which is vertical to the spectator; the point of the heavens directly overhead; opposed to nadir. "From morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day; and with the setting sun Dropped from the zenith, like a falling star."

2.

Hence, figuratively, the point of culmination; the greatest height; the height of success or prosperity. "I find my zenith doth depend upon A most auspicious star." "This dead of midnight is the noon of thought, And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars." "It was during those civil troubles... this aspiring family reached the zenith."

Zenith distance. (Astron.) See under Distance.

Zenith sector. (Astron.) See Sector, 3.

Zenith telescope (Geodesy), a telescope specially designed for determining the latitude by means of any two stars which pass the meridian about the same time, and at nearly equal distances from the zenith, but on opposite sides of it. It turns both on a vertical and a horizontal axis, is provided with a graduated vertical semicircle, and a level for setting it to a given zenith distance, and with a micrometer for measuring the difference of the zenith distances of the two stars.

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Etymology of 'Zenith'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Zenith" Quotes from Famous Books

... watched the auroral bands gather and grow in a cold green sky, straight to the north of us, and then waver and deepen until they reached the very zenith, where they hung, swaying curtains of fire. No wonder the redskins call that wild pageantry of color the ghost-dance of their gods. Even as we watched them, opal and gold and rose and orange and green, we could see them come wheeling down on our little world like an army of angels ...

— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer

... and that they would fall into the sky?" The bishop of Hippo, who thought the earth flat because it appeared so to the eye, supposed in consequence that, if we should connect by straight lines the zenith with the nadir in different places, these lines would be parallel with each other; and in the direction of these lines he traced every movement from above to below. Thence he naturally concluded that the stars were rolling torches set ...

— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Suddenly a spectacle peculiarly Northern and characteristic of Quebec revealed itself; a long arch brightened over the northern horizon; the tremulous flames of the aurora, pallid violet or faintly tinged with crimson, shot upward from it, and played with a weird apparition and evanescence to the zenith. While the strangers looked, a gun boomed from the citadel, and the wild sweet notes of the bugle sprang out upon ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... was hot, and the June sun almost at its zenith. The gale that had rocked the tall trees in fury but a few days before was almost forgotten in the windless weather that had succeeded it. Master Morgan had sauntered along one of the broad woodland paths, and was now lying on his back in a sweet-smelling bed of ...

— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... How good this was, oh how good it was, what a God-given gratification, at last! He was unconscious of her fighting and struggling. The struggling was her reciprocal lustful passion in this embrace, the more violent it became, the greater the frenzy of delight, till the zenith was reached, the crisis, the struggle was overborne, her ...

— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

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