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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.

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Etymology of 'Pinnacle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Pinnacle" Quotes from Famous Books

... me. Just at that time the style of hair dressing was one of those styles which are endurable, and perhaps even very beautiful, in the hands of a first-rate artist and on the heads of those very few women who dress well; but which are more and more hideous the farther you get from that distant pinnacle of the mode, and the lower down they spread among the ranks of society. I thought, as I looked from one to another, I had never seen anything so ill in taste, so outraged in style, so unspeakable in ugliness as well as in pretension. ...

— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Madrid their story should have closed, as the stories in books so often do, with the hero and heroine worked up to some wonderful pitch of self-sacrifice and drama. They so seldom tell of the flatness of the afterwards. The impossibility of retaining a balance on this high pinnacle of moral valor, where circumstance, which is a commonplace and often material thing, decrees that the lights shall not be turned out with the ...

— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn

... brother Macrinus, on Julian's accession to the imperial throne, arrived at the pinnacle of power and celebrity as high priest of the Temple of Serapis, the unsuccessful merchant lost all hope of rivalling his relative in the pursuit of distinction. His insatiable ambition, discarded from himself, now settled on one of his infant sons. He determined that his child ...

— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... repeat either the triumph of Alexander or the fall of Darius. But the peculiar infelicity of the Byzantine princes exposed them to domestic perils, without affording any lively promise of foreign conquest. From the pinnacle of greatness, Andronicus was precipitated by a death more cruel and shameful than that of the malefactor; but the most glorious of his predecessors had much more to dread from their subjects than to hope from their enemies. The army was licentious without spirit, the nation turbulent without ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... done. I had committed myself. After all what right had I to raise myself on a moral pinnacle now? And what did it matter, anyway? I was flying from the danger of my own infidelities, not to save ...

— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

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