Definition:
Mounting by degrees through words or sentences of increasing weight and in parallel construction (see auxesis), with an emphasis on the high point or culmination of a series of events or of an experience. Adjective: climactic. Contrast with anticlimax.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "ladder"Examples:
- "I came, I saw, I conquered."
(Julius Caesar) - "I am the way, the truth, and the life."
(St.John, The New Testament, Chapter 14, verse 4) - "Nothing has been left undone to cripple their minds, debase their moral stature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind."
(Lloyd Garrison, Narrative of the Life of an American Slave) - "Out of its vivid disorder comes order; from its rank smell rises the good aroma of courage and daring; out of its preliminary shabbiness comes the final splendor. And buried in the familiar boasts of its advance agents lies the modesty of most of its people."
(E. B. White, "The Ring of Time") - "My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
"Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world."
(Edward M. Kennedy, Tribute to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, June 8, 1968) - "When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world."
(Barack Obama, "The Audacity of Hope," 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address)
Pronunciation: KLI-max
Also Known As: anabasis, ascensus, marching figure
Alternate Spellings: klimax
