apogee
/ˈapədʒiː
/noun
1The highest point in the development of something; a climax or culmination: a film which was the apogee of German expressionist cinema...
- Perhaps the apogee of the anti-globalisation movement came during the Group of Eight Meeting in Genoa in the third week of July, when some 300,000 people marched in the face of police tear-gas attacks.
- If the United States, the richest country in the world at the apogee of its own wealth, does not take the lead, the rest of the world will not follow.
- ‘The Oscars are the apogee of the awards season - after that, no one is interested,’ said one UK distributor.
2 Astronomy The point in the orbit of the moon or a satellite at which it is furthest from the earth. The opposite of perigee.As the satellite rose up to the apogee of its orbit, the particle counts rose steadily until they reached the highest level, stayed at the maximum for a while, and then abruptly dropped to zero....
- A few taps on the pocket calculator show that the Moon's speed in its geocentric orbit is around 2,300 miles per hour, although variable between perigee and apogee.
- And later on when we once again stepped out into the night air, the three-quarter moon was past its apogee.
Derivatives
apogean
Origin
Late 16th century: from French apogée or modern Latin apogaeum, from Greek apogaion (diastēma), '(distance) away from earth', from apo 'from' + gaia, gē 'earth'.