climax
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: klīʹ-măks
ipa: /ˈklaɪ.mæks/
rhymes: -aɪmæks
Forms: form: climaxes
form: climaces
Etymology: From Latin clīmax, from Ancient Greek κλῖμαξ (klîmax, “ladder, staircase, [rhetorical] climax”), from κλίνω (klínō, “I lean, slant”).
Senses: examples: text: Ye haue a figure which as well by his Greeke and Latine originals […] may be called the marching figure […] and goeth as it were by ſtrides or paces; it may aſwell by called the clyming figure, for Clymax is as much to ſay as a ladder,[…]
ref: 1589 June, George Puttenham, chapter 19, in Edward Arber, editor, The Arte of English Poesie, volume 3, London, published 1869, page 217:
text: Climax, by steps advancing, onward goes
Higher and still more high to an impassion'd close.
ref: 1835, L[arret] Langley, “[Rhetorical Figures.] Climax.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 26:
glosses: A rhetorical device in which a series is arranged in ascending order.
examples: text: […]Expressions for the whole Climax of sensibility[…]
ref: 1781, John Moore, chapter VI, in A view of society and manners in Italy, volume I, page 63:
text: The Begums' ministers, on the contrary, to extort from them the disclosure of the place which concealed the treasures, were, […] after being fettered and imprisoned, led out on to a scaffold, and this array of terrours proving unavailing, the meek tempered Middleton, as a dernier resort, menaced them with a confinement in the fortress of Chunargar. Thus, my lords, was a British garrison made the climax of cruelties!
ref: 1788 June, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, “Mr. Sheridan’s Speech, on Summing Up the Evidence on the Second, or Begum Charge against Warren Hastings, Esq., Delivered before the High Court of Parliament, June 1788”, in Select Speeches, Forensick and Parliamentary, with Prefatory Remarks by N[athaniel] Chapman, M.D., volume I, [Philadelphia, Pa.]: Published by Hopkins and Earle, no. 170, Market Street, published 1808, →OCLC, page 474:
glosses: An instance of such an ascending series.
examples: text: As a trafficker in climaxes and thrills and characterization and wonderful dialogue and suspense and confrontations, I had outlined the Dresden story many times.
ref: 1969 March 31, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., chapter 1, in Slaughterhouse-Five […] (A Seymour Lawrence Book), New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, →OCLC, page 4:
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
narratology
sciences
glosses: The culmination of a narrative's rising action, the turning point.
examples: text: In the accomplishment of this, they frequently reach the climax of absurdity.
ref: 1789, Trifler, 448, No. XXXV:
glosses: A culmination or acme: the last term in an ascending series, particularly
examples: text: When he adds epithets of praise, his climax is ‘so English’.
ref: 1856, Ralph Waldo Emerson, chapter IX, in English Traits, page 147:
glosses: A culmination or acme: the last term in an ascending series
The final term of a rhetorical climax.
qualifier: imprecise
examples: text: The succession of associations leading to a climax represents the process of adjustment to the conditions of stress, and the climax represents a condition of relative equilibrium. Climax associations[…] are the resultants of certain climatic, geological[…] conditions.
ref: 1915 July 17, Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory:
topics: biology
ecology
natural-sciences
glosses: A culmination or acme: the last term in an ascending series
The culmination of ecological development, whereby species are in equilibrium with their environment.
examples: text: In many cases the man's climax comes so swiftly that the woman's reactions are not nearly ready.
ref: 1918, Marie Carmichael Stopes, Married love, section 50:
glosses: A culmination or acme: the last term in an ascending series
The culmination of sexual pleasure, an orgasm.
Synonyms: sense: rhetorical device
word: incrementum
sense: imprecise
word: auxesis
word: catacosmesis
sense: culmination
word: apex
Derived terms: anticlimax
climactic
climax community
climaxless
disclimax
microclimax
miniclimax
monoclimax
nonclimax
plagioclimax
polyclimax
postclimax
preclimax
sexual climax
Related terms: climacteric
anadiplosis