pinnacle

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English

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pinnacles(4) on King's College Chapel, Cambridge, UK

Etymology

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From Middle English, borrowed from Old French pinacle, pinnacle, from Late Latin pinnaculum (a peak, pinnacle), from Latin pinna (a pinnacle); see pin. Doublet of panache.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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pinnacle (plural pinnacles)

  1. The highest point.
    Synonyms: acme, peak, summit
    Antonym: nadir
  2. (geology) A tall, sharp and craggy rock or mountain.
    Coordinate term: sea stack
    • 1900, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 2, page 55:
      Kings, who remain in many respects the representatives of a vanished world, solitary pinnacles that topple over the rising waste of waters under which the past lies buried.
  3. (figuratively) An all-time high; a point of greatest achievement or success.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:apex
    • 2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide[1], page 7:
      The pinnacle of the effort to fix restrictive meanings to a set of terminology can be found in two papers in American Speech by Feinsilver (1979, 1980).
  4. (architecture) An upright member, generally ending in a small spire, used to finish a buttress, to constitute a part in a proportion, as where pinnacles flank a gable or spire.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. [], London: [] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker []; [a]nd by Robert Boulter []; [a]nd Matthias Walker, [], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: [], London: Basil Montagu Pickering [], 1873, →OCLC:
      Some renowned metropolis / With glistering spires and pinnacles around.
    • 1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods[2], London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 1:
      In the city’s midst the gleaming marble of a thousand steps climbed to the citadel where arose four pinnacles beckoning to heaven, and midmost between the pinnacles there stood the dome, vast, as the gods had dreamed it.

Translations

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Verb

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pinnacle (third-person singular simple present pinnacles, present participle pinnacling, simple past and past participle pinnacled)

  1. (transitive) To place on a pinnacle.
  2. (transitive) To build or furnish with a pinnacle or pinnacles.
    • 1782, Thomas Warton, The History and Antiquities of Kiddington:
      The pediment of the Southern Transept is pinnacled, not inelegantly, with a flourished cross

Translations

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Further reading

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Anagrams

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