pinnacle

plural pinnacles

1. The highest point.

   Synonyms: acme, peak, summit, zenith · Antonyms: nadir

2. geographyA tall, sharp and craggy rock or mountain.

   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.

   1900, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 2, page 55

3. figurativelyAn all-time high; a point of greatest achievement or success.

   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).

   2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 7

   Synonyms: acme, apex, zenith, apogee, apotheosis, ascendance, capstone, climax

4. architectureAn 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.

   Some renowned metropolis / With glistering spires and pinnacles around.

   1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC

   1 more example

   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.

   1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods, London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 1

present singular third person pinnacles · participle present pinnacling · participle past pinnacled · past pinnacled

1. transitiveTo place on a pinnacle.

   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.

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

2. transitiveTo build or furnish with a pinnacle or pinnacles.

   The pediment of the Southern Transept is pinnacled, not inelegantly, with a flourished cross

   1782, Thomas Warton, The History and Antiquities of Kiddington

1. A locality in the Weddin council area, central New South Wales, Australia.