pinnacle

English

Etymology

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɪnəkəl/

  • Audio (Southern England)

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Noun

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, 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], , →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, 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

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To place on a pinnacle.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     And down this vast gulf upon which we were pinnacled the great draught dashed and roared, driving clouds and misty wreaths of vapour before it, till we were nearly blinded, and utterly confused.

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

Further reading

• “pinnacle”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “pinnacle”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• pannicle