culmen - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Borrowed from Latin culmen (“apex, acme”).

culmen (plural culmens or culmina)

1. Top; summit.
   Synonyms: top, summit, acme; see also Thesaurus:summit
   • 1681, Balm from Gilead:
     the Shibboleth and Culmen of Honesty
2. (zoology) The dorsal ridge of a bird's bill.
   • 1997 June 20, “A Role for Ecotones in Generating Rainforest Biodiversity”, in Science‎[1], volume 276, number 5320, →DOI, pages 1855–1857:
     The measurements were taken as follows: wing length, from the carpal joint to the tip of the longest primary; tarsus length, from the tibiotarsal joint to the distal undivided scute; upper mandible length, the chord length from the point where the culmen enters the feathers of the head to the tip; bill depth, in the vertical plane level at the anterior edge of the nares.
   • 1910, Alfred M. Tozzer, Glover M. Allen, Animal Figures in the Maya Codices‎[2]:
     A very simple form was found in the carving shown in Pl. 17, fig. 13, where a long projecting knob is seen at the base of the culmen.

• culminal

• culminicorn

• “culmen”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

From Proto-Italic *kolamen, from Proto-Indo-European *kelH- (“to rise, be tall”). Doublet of columen.[1]

• (Classical Latin) IPA(key): [ˈkʊɫ.mɛn]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): [ˈkul.men]

culmen n (genitive culminis); third declension

1. stalk
2. top, roof, summit, peak
   Synonyms: cacūmen, apex, vertex, fastīgium, summitās
   Antonym: fundus
3. (figuratively) height, acme

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

• → Albanian: kulm
• Aromanian: culmã, culmi
• → English: culmen
• Galician: cume, cumio
• Italian: colmo, culmine
• Ladin: colm
• Piedmontese: corm, colm
• Portuguese: cume
• Romanian: culme
• Romansh: culm
• Sicilian: curma
• Spanish: cumbre, → culmen
• → Swedish: kulmen

1. ^ De Vaan, Michiel (2008), “columen, -inis (> Derivatives: culmen, -inis)”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 127

• “culmen”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “culmen”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "culmen", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “culmen”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• Carl Meißner; Henry William Auden (1894), Latin Phrase-Book‎[3], London: Macmillan and Co.
  • the summits of the Alps: culmina Alpium
• Collins Latin Dictionary, →ISBN

Learned borrowing from Latin culmen. Doublet of cumbre.

• IPA(key): /ˈkulmen/ [ˈkul.mẽn]
• Rhymes: -ulmen
• Syllabification: cul‧men

culmen m (plural cúlmenes)

1. height, high point
2. epitome
   Synonym: epítome

• “culmen”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025