And dentists talking about tooth faces have buccal (cheek-side), lingual (tongue side), occlusal (chewing surface), mesial (side closest to center), and distal (the other side from mesial).
the thing that's tricky is basal/apical can be different directions: i.e. the base of the lung is at the bottom, the base of the left ventricle (in the heart) at the top. You have to know the shape of the organ to know. There's also cranial/caudal, axial/coronal/sagittal just off the top of my head
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?