climax
Use Climax in a sentence
mæks| to disappoint or thwart |
| to clarify one's words or writings with examples |
1580–90; < Late Latin < Greek klîmax ladder, akin to klī́nein to lean
Related forms
1. summit, zenith, acme, apex.
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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climax (ˈklaɪmæks) ![[Click for IPA pronunciation guide]](http://static.sfdict.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif) | |
| —n | |
| 1. | the most intense or highest point of an experience or of a series of events: the party was the climax of the week |
| 2. | a decisive moment in a dramatic or other work |
| 3. | a rhetorical device by which a series of sentences, clauses, or phrases are arranged in order of increasing intensity |
| 4. | ecology the stage in the development of a community during which it remains stable under the prevailing environmental conditions |
| 5. | (esp in referring to women) another word for orgasm Also called: sexual climax |
| —vb | |
| 6. | to reach or bring to a climax |
| [C16: from Late Latin, from Greek klimax ladder] | |
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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climax
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climax cli·max (klī'māks')
n.
The height of a disease; the stage of greatest severity.
See orgasm.
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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climax
in ecology, the final stage of biotic succession attainable by a plant community in an area under the environmental conditions present at a particular time. For example, cleared forests in the eastern United States progress from fields, to old fields (with colonizing trees and shrubs), to forests of these early colonists, and finally to climax communities of longer-lived tree species. The species composition of the climax community remains the same because all the species present successfully reproduce themselves and invading species fail to gain a foothold. Because climatic changes, ecological processes, and evolutionary processes cause changes in the environment over very long periods of time, the climax stage is not completely permanent
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