CLIMAX

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does climax mean? 

• CLIMAX (noun)
  The noun CLIMAX has 5 senses:

1. the highest point of anything conceived of as growing or developing or unfolding

2. the decisive moment in a novel or play

3. the moment of most intense pleasure in sexual intercourse

4. the most severe stage of a disease

5. arrangement of clauses in ascending order of forcefulness

  Familiarity information: CLIMAX used as a noun is common.

• CLIMAX (verb)
  The verb CLIMAX has 1 sense:

1. end, especially to reach a final or climactic stage

  Familiarity information: CLIMAX used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CLIMAX (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The highest point of anything conceived of as growing or developing or unfolding

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

climax; flood tide

Context example:

in the flood tide of his success

Hypernyms ("climax" is a kind of...):

juncture; occasion (an event that occurs at a critical time)

Derivation:

climactic (consisting of or causing a climax)

climax (end, especially to reach a final or climactic stage)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The decisive moment in a novel or play

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

climax; culmination

Context example:

the deathbed scene is the climax of the play

Hypernyms ("climax" is a kind of...):

instant; minute; moment; second (a particular point in time)

Holonyms ("climax" is a part of...):

story (a piece of fiction that narrates a chain of related events)

Derivation:

climactic (consisting of or causing a climax)

climax (end, especially to reach a final or climactic stage)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The moment of most intense pleasure in sexual intercourse

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

climax; coming; orgasm; sexual climax

Hypernyms ("climax" is a kind of...):

consummation (the act of bringing to completion or fruition)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "climax"):

male orgasm (an orgasm accompanied by the sensation of ejaculation of semen)

Derivation:

climactic (consisting of or causing a climax)

Sense 4

Meaning:

The most severe stage of a disease

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("climax" is a kind of...):

degree; level; point; stage (a specific identifiable position in a continuum or series or especially in a process)

Derivation:

climactic (consisting of or causing a climax)

Sense 5

Meaning:

Arrangement of clauses in ascending order of forcefulness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("climax" is a kind of...):

rhetorical device (a use of language that creates a literary effect (but often without regard for literal significance))

• CLIMAX (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they climax    ... he / she / it climaxes   
Past simple: climaxed   
Past participle: climaxed   
-ing form: climaxing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

End, especially to reach a final or climactic stage

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

climax; culminate

Context example:

The meeting culminated in a tearful embrace

Hypernyms (to "climax" is one way to...):

cease; end; finish; stop; terminate (have an end, in a temporal, spatial, or quantitative sense; either spatial or metaphorical)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "climax"):

crown; top (be the culminating event)

Sentence frame:

Something is ----ing PP

Derivation:

climax (the decisive moment in a novel or play)

climax (the highest point of anything conceived of as growing or developing or unfolding)

 Context examples 

It was strange to think that the climax of all the age-long process of Nature had been the creation of that gentleman in the red tie.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I thought you had too much pride and sense to truckle to any mortal woman just because she wears French boots and rides in a coupe, said Jo, who, being called from the tragic climax of her novel, was not in the best mood for social enterprises.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But Mr. Mills, who was always doing something or other to annoy me—or I felt as if he were, which was the same thing—had brought his conduct to a climax, by taking it into his head that he would go to India.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Meg had an extra row of little curlpapers across her forehead, Jo had copiously anointed her afflicted face with cold cream, Beth had taken Joanna to bed with her to atone for the approaching separation, and Amy had capped the climax by putting a clothespin on her nose to uplift the offending feature.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

This was the climax.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Then they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)