How do you invert the functional parameters for lapply in R?

I've been wondering for a while: in R, what is the recommended way to invert function parameters for order-dependent functions to allow list-style processing?

For a simple example, let's say I have a list of numbers and one divisor.

numerator = list(5, 10, 15, 250)
denominator = 2

      

        
        
        
      

    

I want to divide each number by a divisor. I know that I can easily use a numeric vector in this case:

as.numeric(numerator)/denominator
# [1]   2.5   5.0   7.5 125.0

      

        
        
        
      

    

But in the real world, a list can contain a more complex data structure, which makes vector wrapping impossible. This is a simple example. Instead, we could use lapply (or sapply) like this to give the same answer:

sapply(numerator, "/", denominator)
# [1]   2.5   5.0   7.5 125.0

      

        
        
        
      

    

So here's the question: what do you do if you want to flip the arguments to a function? As is the case, divide the "denominator" by each number, and not vice versa? Usually "/" you provide the numerator, then the denominator. But now I want to split the denominator by the numerator, the "/" function can no longer be used with sapply (for which the list item must be the first function argument).

I want this result:

denominator/as.numeric(numerator)
# [1] 0.4000000 0.2000000 0.1333333 0.0080000

      

        
        
        
      

    

I usually do this to write a new function that inverts the parameters:

inverse_divide = function(denominator, numerator) {
    return(numerator/denominator)
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

Now it works:

sapply(numerator, inverse_divide, denominator)
# [1] 0.4000000 0.2000000 0.1333333 0.0080000

      

        
        
        
      

    

But this is getting old. Is there an easier way?