Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A decline viewed in disappointing contrast with a previous rise: the anticlimax of a brilliant career.
- n. Something trivial or commonplace that concludes a series of significant events: After a week of dramatic negotiations, all that followed was anticlimax.
- n. A sudden descent in speaking or writing from the impressive or significant to the ludicrous or inconsequential, or an instance of it: "Waggish non-Yale men never seem weary of calling 'for God, for Country and for Yale' the outstanding single anticlimax in the English language” ( Time).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A figure or fault of style, consisting in an abrupt descent from stronger to weaker expressions, or from the mention of more important to that of less important things: opposed to climax.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Rhet.) A sentence in which the ideas fall, or become less important and striking, at the close; -- the opposite of
climax . It produces a ridiculous effect.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a disappointing decline after a previous rise
- n. a change from a serious subject to a disappointing one
Examples
“Any event stages or sponsored by them is gonna be an exercise in anticlimax, no matter what.”
Think Progress » ACLU will sue high school that canceled prom to stop lesbians from attending.
“I think this is what you might call an anticlimax.”
“I can't agree at all that the finale was any kind of anticlimax though!”
“It was a disappointment to most of us, I think — a kind of anticlimax before we'd really gotten started.”
“Taking her tea seems a kind of anticlimax to last night," said Julius thoughtfully.”
“Their treatment by the prison officials was not ordinarily severe; even a warden or a guard could feel that clubbing and dark-celling would be a kind of anticlimax for a man sentenced for life.”
“Given the Greek parliament last week passed a vote of confidence, Mizuho credit analyst Anke Richter noted this week's test is likely to end positively as well, with the heated anticipation resulting in an anticlimax.”
“And before this anticlimax can become a moment of appealing self-deprecation, Mr. Jennings notes that he outperformed all other first-time contestants.”
“But it's a bit of an anticlimax to be honest as people are treading very carefully.”
“Oppegaard deftly aligns the inner fears and waning hopes of his well-rounded protagonists with the paranormal tremors, but the tension all but dies in the final act as the novel unspools into a disappointingly diffuse anticlimax.”
WEEKLY BOOK RELEASES FOR DECEMBER 6TH | Open Society Book Club Discussions and Reviews
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘anticlimax’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Mirrored Vowels
Rules:
• The word must have an even number of vowels.
• There must be four or more vowels; thus, at minimum, an A-A-A-A or A-B-B-A pattern.
• The vowels must appear in a mir...feminine, solicitor, caruncular, repackager, semiprimes, fetishises, decomposer, demonlover, recomposer, sepultures, lipotropic, colesterol and 385 more...
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Antics
anticonvulsant, pedantic, unanticipated, atlantic, semantics, canticle, geanticline, manticore, anticyclone, antichrist, infanticide, antic and 44 more...
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anti-
against, hostile; operating against; preventing, curing, neutralizing
antilabor, antiballistic, antitoxin, antiperistalsis, antipope, antichrist, antithesis, anti-inflammatory, antimatter, antibiotic, antibody, anticlimax and 1 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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Flora and fauna ending in 'x'
Scientific names are in, but bacteria and viruses are out, so no -poxes.
Also no Gauls.ibex, fox, ilex, ox, phoenix, lynx, hyrax, sphinx, chevaux, tamarix, tortrix, dipteryx and 59 more...
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X Marks the Spot
Words ending in "x" (except proper nouns and trademarks)
ax, ex, ox, soapbox, smallpox, six, sex, sax, rex, pressbox, climax, chickenpox and 208 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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SAT Vocab
Redundant.
problematic, proclivity, prodigal, prodigious, prodigy, profane, profligate, profound, profusion, proliferation, prolific, prologue and 455 more...
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Time for a new list!
abrupt, erupt, rupture, sync, appropinquity, heterochromia, homochromatic, monochromatic, willy nilly, nitty gritty, kowtow, wonton and 455 more...
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Revised GRE Wordlist_2013
Vocabulary building for my quest of GRE 2013
ephemeral, esoteric, rhetoric, censure, egregious, pittance, dupe, mulct, paucity, alacrity, maintain, laconic and 997 more...
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Favorite Words
i love words.
ricochet, clavicle, etymology, equivocate, decoupage, dillydally, effervescent, flimflam, haberdashery, hullabaloo, debacle, juxtapose and 210 more...
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avawake's list
elpis, transient, anon, remeet, orerry, fitfull, benediction, infinitum, ad, ananym, halcyon, bird and 93 more...
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Opethead's list
All Words
deplore, immense, ominouse, dilapidated, dunghill, admonitary, procuring, legilimens, mediocre, implicitly, beseechingly, imperiously and 170 more...
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ash
ash
abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abide, abject, abjure and 4874 more...
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Bram Stoker's Dracula
Words used in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
decadence, emancipation, nostalgia, abounded, modernity, revolution, famine, conservative, privy, vied, nascent, correspondence and 211 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for anticlimax.
mollusque A genus of mollusks in the family Vitrinellidae, members of which are less than 2 mm long.
William H. Dall, a scientist at the Smithsonian named the genus Climacia in 1903, not realizing that that name had been used for a genus of insects in 1869. Cuban scientists Aguayo and Borro replaced the name with Climacina in 1946, but that proved to be preoccupied by Climacina Gemmellaro, 1878. Pilsbry and McGinty then replaced that name with Anticlimax, saying "we are compelled to impose still another name upon these helpless midgets." Dec 13, 2008