culminate.
Of a heavenly body, to be at the highest point, reach its greatest altitude.
Meaning & usage
Of a heavenly body, to be at the highest point, reach its greatest altitude.
To reach the (physical or figurative) summit, highest point, peak etc.
The tower culminates in a point.
To reach a climax; to come to a decisive point, especially an end or conclusion.
Their messy breakup culminated in a restraining order.
The class will culminate with a rigorous examination.
To reach a point at which continued progress is not possible.
To finalize, bring to a conclusion, form the climax of.
Where this word comes from
First attested in 1647; borrowed from Medieval Latin culminātus, perfect passive participle of culminō (“to crown”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from Latin culmen (“peak, highest point”, oblique stem culmin-) + -ō (verb-forming suffix), older form columen (“top, summit”), from Proto-Italic *kolamen, from a Proto-Indo-European base *kol-, *kelH- (“to project, rise; peak, summit, top”), whence also English hill and holm.
Relating to the culmen.
Growing upward, as opposed to lateral growth.
Where this word comes from
First attested in 1846; by surface analysis, Latin culmen (oblique stem culmin-) + -ate (adjective-forming suffix), see Etymology 1.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.