Culmination

How to spell culmination

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce culmination

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does culmination mean?

1. nounThe highest or final point of something, reached after a long process or effort.

Culmination in a sentence

• The awards ceremony was the culmination of months of hard work.

• Winning the contract marked the culmination of years of patient negotiation.

Where does culmination come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin noun culmen, which literally meant the top, ridge, or summit of something, such as the highest point of a roof or a mountain. From culmen, Late Latin formed the verb culminare, meaning to reach the highest point, and from that came culminationem, the act of reaching the peak. English took the word in during the early 1600s, at first as a technical term in astronomy: a star or planet was said to reach its culmination when it crossed the meridian at its highest point in the sky. From that precise observational sense it broadened into the everyday figurative meaning of a final, climactic high point of any process or effort. The same Latin culmen lurks behind the rarer English word culminate, and keeping that root in mind, culmin plus ation, helps explain why there is no double letter or hidden silent letter to trip over.

How the word is built

• culmin- (from Latin culmen: top, summit)
• -ate (verb-forming)
• -ion (noun-forming) -> the act of reaching the peak