The Etymology of Antipode
Antipode is a piece of Greek geography that became a piece of English geometry. The Greek word antipous (singular) literally means with feet against — anti (opposite) plus pous, podos (foot). Greek thinkers from Plato onward, recognising that the earth was spherical, speculated about whether people might inhabit the opposite hemisphere — people whose feet would be pointing up at the feet of those in the known world, through the centre of the earth. They called these hypothetical inhabitants antipodes, the foot-against ones. Medieval Christian writers were uneasy about antipodes (it was hard to fit them into the geography of Genesis), and Augustine treated the question with caution. With the European voyages of exploration, the antipodes turned out to be very real: Britons in the 19th century took to calling Australia and New Zealand the Antipodes, since those islands are nearly the diametric opposite of the British Isles. The figurative sense — antipode of an idea or person — emerged in the 16th century. Greek pous also gives us podiatrist, octopus, tripod, and platypus.