CULMINATION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does culmination mean? 

• CULMINATION (noun)
  The noun CULMINATION has 4 senses:

1. a final climactic stage

2. (astronomy) a heavenly body's highest celestial point above an observer's horizon

3. the decisive moment in a novel or play

4. a concluding action

  Familiarity information: CULMINATION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CULMINATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A final climactic stage

Classified under:

Nouns denoting time and temporal relations

Synonyms:

apogee; culmination

Context example:

their achievements stand as a culmination of centuries of development

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

phase; stage (any distinct time period in a sequence of events)

Derivation:

culminate (bring to a head or to the highest point)

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

culminate (reach the highest or most decisive point)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(astronomy) a heavenly body's highest celestial point above an observer's horizon

Classified under:

Nouns denoting spatial position

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

celestial point (a point in the heavens (on the celestial sphere))

Domain category:

astronomy; uranology (the branch of physics that studies celestial bodies and the universe as a whole)

Derivation:

culminate (reach the highest altitude or the meridian, of a celestial body)

Sense 3

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 ("culmination" is a kind of...):

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

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

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

Derivation:

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

culminate (reach the highest or most decisive point)

Sense 4

Meaning:

A concluding action

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

closing; completion; culmination; mop up; windup

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

conclusion; ending; termination (the act of ending something)

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

consummation (the act of bringing to completion or fruition)

consummation (the completion of marriage by sexual intercourse)

finish; finishing (the act of finishing)

finalisation; finalization (the act of finalizing)

follow-through (carrying some project or intention to full completion)

follow-through (the act of carrying a stroke to its natural completion)

graduation (the successful completion of a program of study)

Derivation:

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

 Context examples 

The full moon of November 12 will bring a relationship matter to a happy culmination.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

The atlas is the culmination of work from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Consortium, established to catalog how genomic variation influences how genes are turned off and on.

(NIH completes atlas of human DNA differences that influence gene expression, National Institutes of Health)

The hand continued slowly to descend, while he crouched beneath it, eyeing it malignantly, his snarl growing shorter and shorter as, with quickening breath, it approached its culmination.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

I noted them walking the deck together one morning, and I likened them to the extreme ends of the human ladder of evolution—the one the culmination of all savagery, the other the finished product of the finest civilization.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

An era of geological history which extends from the beginning of the Cambrian to the close of the Permian and is marked by the culmination of nearly all classes of invertebrates except the insects and in the later epochs of which seed-bearing plants, amphibians, and reptiles first appeared.

(Paleozoic, NOAA Paleoclimate Glossary)

He had entitled the story Adventure, and it was the apotheosis of adventure—not of the adventure of the storybooks, but of real adventure, the savage taskmaster, awful of punishment and awful of reward, faithless and whimsical, demanding terrible patience and heartbreaking days and nights of toil, offering the blazing sunlight glory or dark death at the end of thirst and famine or of the long drag and monstrous delirium of rotting fever, through blood and sweat and stinging insects leading up by long chains of petty and ignoble contacts to royal culminations and lordly achievements.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

You may see the culmination of an important trip that thrills you, or you may finalize an agreement.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

White Fang's snarling began with the movement, and increased as the movement approached its culmination.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

It seems that a project is coming to a culmination, so perhaps you are working on a highly creative project that will conclude within four days of January 10.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

The growl rose in the throat with the culmination of each forward-pushing movement, and ebbed down to start up afresh with the beginning of the next movement.

(White Fang, by Jack London)