Noun

(en noun)

The point of the celestial sphere, directly opposite the zenith; inferior pole of the horizon; point of the celestial sphere directly under the place where we stand.

* 1638 , Sir Thomas Herbert, Some years travels into divers parts of Asia and Afrique :

(figuratively) The lowest point; time of greatest depression.

* (rfdate) :

The seventh century is the nadir of the human mind in Europe.

* 1950 , Elizabeth Janeway, in Helen Hull (editor), The Writer’s Book :

In this nadir of poetic repute, when the only verse that most people read from one year’s end to the next is what appears on greetings cards, it is well for us to stop and consider our poets.

(astronomy) The axis of a projected conical shadow; the direction of the force of gravity at a location; down.

The nadir of the sun is the axis of the shadow projected by the Earth.

(beekeeping, archaic) An empty box added beneath a full one in a beehive to give the colony more room to expand or store honey.

Noun

The lowest part from the uppermost part, in either of these senses:

# (rfc-sense) The part furthest in the direction toward which an unsupported object would fall.

#* Macaulay

barrels with the bottom knocked out

#* Washington Irving

No two chairs were alike; such high backs and low backs and leather bottoms and worsted bottoms.

# (rfc-sense) The part seen, or intended to be seen, nearest the edge of the visual field normally occupied by the lowest visible objects, as "footers appear at the bottoms of pages".

(uncountable, British, slang) Character, reliability, staying power, dignity, integrity or sound judgment.

lack bottom

(British, US) a valley, often used in place names.

Where shall we go for a walk? How about Ashcombe Bottom ?

* Stoddard

the bottoms and the high grounds

(euphemistic) The buttocks or anus.

(nautical) a cargo vessel, a ship.

* 1881 , :

We sail in leaky bottoms and on great and perilous waters; [...]

(nautical) certain parts of a vessel, particularly the cargo hold or the portion of the ship that is always underwater.

* Shakespeare

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted.

* Bancroft

Not to sell the teas, but to return them to London in the same bottoms in which they were shipped.

(baseball) The second half of an inning, the home team's turn to bat.

(BDSM) A submissive in sadomasochistic sexual activity.

(LGBT, slang) A man penetrated or with a preference for being penetrated during homosexual intercourse.

(physics) A bottom quark.

(often, figuratively) The lowest part of a container.

* {{quote-news, year=2011

, date=December 21 , author=Helen Pidd , title=Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis , work=the Guardian citation , page= , passage=In Ireland, where 14.5% of the population are jobless, emigration has climbed steadily since 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the bottom fell out of the Irish housing market. In the 12 months to April this year, 40,200 Irish passport-holders left, up from 27,700 the previous year, according to the central statistics office. Irish nationals were by far the largest constituent group among emigrants, at almost 53%.}}

A ball or skein of thread; a cocoon.

* Mortimer

Silkworms finish their bottoms in fifteen days.

The bed of a body of water, as of a river, lake, or sea.

An abyss.

(Dryden)

(obsolete) Power of endurance.

a horse of a good bottom

(obsolete) Dregs or grounds; lees; sediment.

(Johnson)