Word Finder - climax

definition

(originally rhetorical) A rhetorical device in which a series is arranged in ascending order.

definition

An instance of such an ascending series.

definition

The culmination of a narrative's rising action, the turning point.

definition

(now commonly) A culmination or acme: the last term in an ascending series, particularly:

definition

To reach or bring to a climax.

definition

To orgasm; to reach orgasm.

That event was the climax of a long series of horrors.

Matters reached a climax in 1276.

The exaggeration of the height of the mitre, which began at the time of the Renaissance, reached its climax in the 17th century.

The climax of iniquity was the murder of Jehoiada's son Zechariah.

At last a fierce family feud came to a climax.

The verse quoted forms the climax of Mic. i.

The polished stone work is superb, finding its climax in Porto Rico, which seems to have been the sacred island of the Caribs.

The climax came with the death of Bedford, and defection of Philip of Burgundy in 1435.

To this was joined a singular power of rhetorical climax.

Competing against the police and against time, the investigation reaches a fast-paced, gripping climax.

The crack in the final overhang provides a fitting climax.

No contemporary, unaided by personal knowledge, could be expected to trust in Wagner's purity of ideal on the strength of Tannhauser, which actually achieved popularity by such coarse methods of climax as the revivalistic end of the overture, by such maudlin pathos as 0 du mein holder Abendstern, and by the amiably childish grand-opera skill with which half the action is achieved by processions and a considerable fraction of the music is represented by fanfares.

After even the finest things in Tannhauser, the Vorspiel to Lohengrin comes as a revelation, with its quiet solemnity and breadth of design, its ethereal purity of tone-colour, and its complete emancipation from earlier operatic forms. The suspense and climax in the first act is so intense, and the whole drama is so well designed, that we must have a very vivid idea of the later Wagner before we can see how far the quality of musical thought still falls short of his ideals.

Sometimes, too, when a great dramatic climax has given place to a lyrical anticlimax, retrospective moods, subtleties of emotion and crowning musical thoughts press in upon Wagner's mind with a closeness that determines every word; and thus not only is the whole third act of Tristan, as Wagner said when he was working at it, of " overwhelming tragic power," but Isolde's dying utterances (which occupy the last five minutes and are, of course, totally without action or dramatic tension) were not unlike fine poetry even before the music was written.

The revolt of various disaffected provinces brought matters to a climax; in September 1875 one-half of the service of the interest was suspended, paper certificates known as " Ramazans " (since they were issued in the Arabic month of that name) being issued for that half in lieu of cash, and in the following March it was suspended altogether.

This climax was reached at the very moment when Darwin was publishing the Origin of Species (1859), by which universal opinion has been brought to the position that species, as well as genera, orders and classes, are the subjective expressions of a vast ramifying pedigree in which the only objective existences are individuals, the apparent species as well as higher groups being marked out, not by any distributive law, but by the interaction of living matter and its physical environment, causing the persistence of some forms and the destruction of vast series of ancestral intermediate kinds.

He starts from the fundamental thought of Jewish apocalyptic that the end of the world will be brought about by the direct intervention of God when evil has reached its climax.

The crowning struggle of Gladstone's political career was now approaching its climax.

Hence the coast as a whole is irregular, with numerous embayments, peninsulas and islands; and in Maine this irregularity reaches a disadvantageous climax.

During his reign the struggle between the princes and the cities reached its climax.

Getting to Faro was always going to be a bit of an anti climax for me.

An account of the visit formed the dramatic climax to the Seven Pillars.

However, this proves to be no ordinary group therapy as events reach a nail-biting climax.

This 256-page hardback book takes the Players further along the road to the epic climax of the series.

Thus starts the events that leads to the film's violent climax.

The climax which came to Churchill's life in 1940 was, like the Battle of Waterloo, a ' damned close-run thing ' .

Phedre was the climax of her triumphs, and when she and her husband deserted the Hotel de Bourgogne (see Bejart ad fin.), it was selected to open the Comedie Frangaise on the 26th of August 1680.

By Matthew Gregory Lewis again "Timour" is depicted as the conventional tyrant of a gorgeous melodrama, slaying, burning, slaughtering and committing every possible atrocity until checked by a violent death and a poetical climax.

Eventually, the episode climax occurs when Spock and Captain Kirk enter into a duel to the death, but beforehand, McCoy injects Captain Kirk with a compound that simulates a condition like death.

He chooses this order so as to work up to a climax of error and absurdity in heathen worship. The direct natureworship of the Chaldeans is shown to be false because its objects are works of the Creator, fashioned for the use of men.

The unbounded reverence of the Moslems for the Koran reaches its climax in the dogma that this book, as the divine word, i.e.

The climax was reached when at a given- moment the curtains of the shrine placed on the boat were withdrawn, and the god was revealed to the eyes of the awe-struck multitude.

This feature reaches a climax of beauty and elaboration in the large print of "St Eustace and the Stag," while the figures and animals remain still somewhat cramped and immature.

The steep and rugged pass between Solyma and the sea, called the Climax ("Ladder"), was the only direct communication between Lycia and Pamphylia.

The controversy about the Sabbath had brought their dissatisfaction to a climax.

A climax of indignation is reached when a blind man is healed at the pool of Siloam on the sabbath day.

With these wonderful scenes, the most intensely tragic in all German literature, Goethe's poetry in this period reaches its climax.

He himself regarded it as a kind of climax to his life; never before had he attained such complete understanding of his genius and mission in the world; it afforded him a vantage-ground from which he could renew the past and make plans for the future.

What would have completely derailed lesser players (equipment screwup at the climax of the signature tune) became proof of their mastery.

Each year the number of anti-slavery petitions received and presented by him increased; perhaps the climax was in 1837, when Adams presented a petition from twenty-two slaves, and, when threatened by his opponents with censure, defended himself with remarkable keenness and ability.

Spurred on by his wife the matter reached a climax in 1574, when letters were discovered, which, while revealing a hope to bring over Augustus to Calvinism, cast some aspersions upon the elector and his wife.

Their school of bronze sculpture, whose first famous exponent was Ageladas (Hagelaidas), the reputed master of Pheidias, reached its climax towards the end of the 5th century in the atelier of Polyclitus and his pupils.

The success of these undertakings engendered a wild spirit of speculation in tea companies both in India and at home, which reached its climax in 1865.

In 3 2 B.C. Antony's repudiation of his wife Octavia, sister of Octavian, and the discovery of his will, with its clear proofs of Cleopatra's dangerous ascendancy, brought matters to a climax, and war was declared, not indeed against Antony, but against Cleopatra.

The climax of the Reconstruction period was the socalled Baxter-Brooks war.

Whether as exhibiting the Divine leading and aid, or as recording the impartial and even kindly attitude of the Roman State towards the Christians, the writer has reached a climax.

The enthusiasm aroused by Liszt's playing and his personality - the two are inseparable - reached a climax at Vienna and Budapest in 1839-1840, when he received a patent of nobility from the emperor of Austria, and a sword of honour from the magnates of Hungary in the name of the nation.

The new synthesis reveals a universal decline from the 5th to the 10th centuries, while the Germanic races were learning the rudiments of culture, a decline that was deepened by each succeeding wave of migration, each tribal war of Franks or Saxons, and reached its climax in the disorders of the 9th and 10th centuries when the half-formed civilization of Christendom was forced to face the migration of the Northmen by sea, the raids of the Saracen upon the south and the onslaught of Hungarians and Sla y s upon the east.

The former first made its appearance about the middle of the 19th century, and reached a climax in 1856, when only about 15,000 pipes, that is, about onesixth of the usual quantity, was vintaged.

Indeed, it may be said that the main fermentation rarely, if ever, reaches a climax.