pinnacle

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French pinacle, pinnacle, from Late Latin pinnaculum (“a peak, pinnacle”), double diminutive of Latin pinna (“a pinnacle”); see pin. Doublet of panache.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɪnəkəl/

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pinnacle (plural pinnacles)

1. The highest point.

   Synonyms: acme, peak, summit

   Antonym: nadir

2. (geology) A tall, sharp and craggy rock or mountain.
   • 1900, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 2, page 55:

     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.

   Coordinate term: sea stack

3. (figuratively) An all-time high; a point of greatest achievement or success.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:apex

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

     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).

4. (architecture) An 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.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:

     Some renowned metropolis / With glistering spires and pinnacles around.

pinnacle (third-person singular simple present pinnacles, present participle pinnacling, simple past and past participle pinnacled)

1. (transitive) To place on a pinnacle.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, OCLC 1167497017:

     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.

2. (transitive) To build or furnish with a pinnacle or pinnacles.
   • 1782, Thomas Warton, The History and Antiquities of Kiddington

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

• pinnacle in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• pinnacle in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911

• pannicle