Specific words for narrow and fat ends of eggs?

Solution 1:

I found this in Smolin and Thoft's The Cornea: Scientific Foundations and Clinical Practice...

A better description of corneal shape is that it is aspherical, where the central 4 mm of the cornea tends to be spherical, but then gradually flattens toward the periphery, much like the pointed (prolate) end of an ellipsoid or an egg.

Given the well-established oblate / prolate distinction, I think it should be easy for anyone to understand that the oblate end of an egg would be the rounded (not "pointy") one.


In principle, I suppose you could also refer to them as the Lilliputian and Blefuscuan ends (after the satirical treatment in Gulliver's Travels) but Swift himself would probably be horrified by that. His whole point was that these are "trivial, meaningless" distinctions, so he wouldn't like to think later generations of real people might actually incorporate his "terminology" into English itself.

Both Swift and people referencing his work today refer to the above factions as Big-Endians and Little-endians, but in practice when talking about the actual ends of eggs it's usually the rounded and the pointed (facetiously, pointy) ends.

Solution 2:

Big end and little end are the usual names, due to the story by Swift.

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels

See also:

  • https://www.ietf.org/rfc/ien/ien137.txt

Solution 3:

"Apical" for the pointed (small) end; "Abapical" for the other end

These are anatomy terms - "Apical" means "the apex end", like the pointed end of the heart. "Abapical" means "the end opposite the pointed end", like the "base" of the heart.