MEANING
1. To reach, or bring something to, a final, highest, or most decisive stage.
2. To rise to or form the highest point of a physical shape.
3. For a celestial body, to reach the highest point in its apparent daily path.
Use it for
describing a sequence reaching its climax; identifying the final outcome of a long process; showing an escalating pattern reaching a decisive event; distinguishing culmination from a claim of sole causationIdentifies a final or climactic stage without treating sequence as proof of causation; keeps spatial and astronomical peak uses distinct. Writing functions: Change / Pattern / Trend, Analysis / Interpretation.
Words that belong together
- culminate in a decision
- culminate with a final meeting
- a campaign culminating in reform
On the page
Years of local petitions culminated in a public inquiry.
The exhibition culminates with the unfinished work that occupied her final decade.
The broken roofline culminated in one leaning spire.
The ridge culminated in a pale peak that remained visible above the mist.
The observers waited until the star culminated before making the comparison.
Word forms
- Base
- culminate
- Past tense
- culminated
- Past participle
- culminated
- Present participle
- culminating
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- culminate
- Present continuous
- am/is/are culminating
- Present perfect
- have/has culminated
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been culminating
- Past
- culminated
- Past continuous
- was/were culminating
- Past perfect
- had culminated
- Past perfect continuous
- had been culminating
- Future
- will culminate
- Future continuous
- will be culminating
- Future perfect
- will have culminated
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been culminating
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Verb: culminate; culminates; culminated; culminated; culminating. Future: will culminate. Usually intransitive, culminating in or with something; transitive use can mean bring to a climax or completion. Register: formal. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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