Your medical comment reminded me of the fascinating constellation of terminology used to identify locations and orientations in anatomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location
Some of the terms: dorsal/ventral, proximal/distal, anterior/posterior, superior/inferior, oral/aboral, basal/apical
When you're describing something like a microbe, the terms get fairly arbitrary; which is the "head" end of some little blobby thing?