culmen

English

Etymology

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

Noun

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, 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:

     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.

Derived terms

• culminal
• culminicorn

 

Further reading

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

Latin

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈkul.men/, [ˈkʊɫ̪mɛn]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈkul.men/, [ˈkulmen]

Noun

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

Declension

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

	singular	plural
nominative	culmen	culmina
genitive	culminis	culminum
dative	culminī	culminibus
accusative	culmen	culmina
ablative	culmine	culminibus
vocative	culmen	culmina

Descendants

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

References

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

Further reading

• “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’s 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, London: Macmillan and Co.
  • the summits of the Alps: culmina Alpium
    
• Collins Latin Dictionary, →ISBN

Spanish

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin culmen. Doublet of cumbre.

Pronunciation

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

Noun

culmen m (plural cúlmenes)

1. height, epitome, high point

Further reading

• “culmen”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10