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For physical placement "up vs down" meets this meaning in relation to the Earth (even though the intended meaning is relative to the top vs bottom of an observer's visual field) and "inwards vs outwards" somewhat meets the same meaning for a larger variety of contexts when directionality is meant to be expressed. Although the former is not suitable for generalizing the same meaning since it is supposed to evoke meaning in relation to the observer's vision, and the latter falls a little short with abstract concepts.

Is there an antonym pair from an English/Latin/Greek root that fully meets this even for abstract concepts such as describing a community in regards to pointing towards inner circles or towards non-members, or academic or engineering concepts like conveying pointing towards the core of a control system or towards external systems it interfaces with?

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  • Sorry. We don't do word requests here. – curiousdannii Aug 31 '20 at 4:48
  • Undeleting since "a single word in relation to multiple languages or a single word/single language" – Layman Sep 1 '20 at 20:41
  • Also thank you for the warm welcome @curiousdannii – Layman Sep 1 '20 at 20:42
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    I think you're asking about general terms for referring to proximity, whether social, physical, conceptual etc, is that right? If so how about 'proximal/distal' or even 'hither/thither'? BTW @curiousdannii was correct, we don't do word requests here, you'd be better off asking on the English SE. – Gaston Ümlaut Sep 2 '20 at 0:37

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