Antipode

Word of the Day for Sunday, March 11, 2012

antipode \AN-ti-pohd\, noun:

A direct or exact opposite.

It seemed that this enthusiast was just as cautious, just as much alive to judgments in other minds as if he had been that antipode of all enthusiasm called "a man of the world."
-- George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

I look for the furthest spot on earth away from Lancaster — Lancaster's antipode— the middle of the Indian Ocean.
-- Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

Here we are, thrust to the opposite and absurd antipode of what we think is good. And tomorrow we'll be out of bed at three o'clock in the pitch-black morning.
-- Tim O'Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home

Antipode is actually a clipping, or back-formation, of the word Greek word antipodes. It lost its s in the mid-1500s. The original word literally meant "opposite feet," as in "the place on the exact opposite point on the globe."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/