PINNACLE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Pinnacle

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/pˈɪnəkəl/ Listen

noun

Pinnacle n.

(Arch.) An architectural member, upright, and 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, and the like. Pinnacles may be considered primarily as added weight, where it is necessary to resist the thrust of an arch, etc. "Some renowned metropolis With glistering spires and pinnacles around."

Anything resembling a pinnacle; a lofty peak; a pointed summit. "Three silent pinnacles of aged snow." "The slippery tops of human state, The gilded pinnacles of fate."

verb

Pinnacle v. t. (past & past part. pinnacled; pres. part. pinnacling) To build or furnish with a pinnacle or pinnacles.

See images of 'Pinnacle'

Etymology of 'Pinnacle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Pinnacle" Quotes from Famous Books

... Markets) and fully sustained the anticipations which were formed of him by his relations. For a year or two afterwards no quarrel was fought without him; and his prowess rose until he had gained the very pinnacle of that ambition which he had determined to reach. About this time I was separated from him, having found it necessity, in order to accomplish my objects in life, to reside with a relation in another part of ...

— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... human plummet has sounded the depths of a woman's devotion; no surveyor's chain will ever mark the limits of a woman's faithful, patient endurance; and only the wings of an archangel can transcend that pinnacle to which the sublime principle of self-sacrifice ...

— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... his voice for the sake of the profane and idle who may chance to stumble across his entertainment. His living auditors, unsolicited for the tribute of worship or an alms, find themselves conceived of in the likeness of what he would have them to be, raised to a companion pinnacle of friendship, and constituted peers and judges, if they will, of his ...

— Style • Walter Raleigh

... a fortunate combination of events placing in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though with superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I could never have reached by ...

— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... themselves very much upon the antiquity of the line from which they have descended. Now the family of Queen Catharine had risen to rank and distinction within a moderate period; and though she was, as Queen of France, on the very pinnacle of human greatness, she would naturally be vexed at any remark which would remind her of the recentness of her elevation. Now Mary at one time said, in conversation in the presence of Queen Catharine, that she herself was the ...

— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

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