apothem

thumb|right|Apothem of a hexagon

The apothem (sometimes abbreviated as apo) of a regular polygon is a line segment from the center to the midpoint of one of its sides. Equivalently, it is the line drawn from the center of the polygon that is perpendicular to one of its sides. The word "apothem" can also refer to the length of that line segment and comes from the ancient Greek ἀπόθεμα ("put away, put aside"), made of ἀπό ("off, away") and θέμα ("that which is laid down"), indicating a generic line written down. Regular polygons are the only polygons that have apothems. Because of this, all the apothems in a polygon will be congruent.