This term describes being lower in place or position, closer to the bottom or base. The best fit is inferior, which is used to compare something as being below or beneath another thing in rank, quality, or location. The word traces to Latin inferus, meaning below, and in anatomy it often means toward the feet or the lower part of the body, opposite of superior. For example, you might say the inferior border of a structure is nearer the floor than its superior border, or that one item is inferior to another in quality. The other terms don’t convey a sense of lower position: infamy refers to notorious bad reputation, impaired means weakened or damaged, and incidence refers to the rate at which something occurs.