cacuminous

cacūmin- (the stem of the Latin cacūmen (“tree-top”)) + -ous

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kəkyo͞oʹmĭnəs, IPA^(key): /kəˈkjuːmɪnəs/

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cacuminous (not comparable)

1. (rare) Having a pyramidal top.

   Cleopatra’s Needles are three cacuminous monoliths first erected in Ancient Egypt over a thousand years before the birth of Christ.

   • 1597: John Hoskyns’ “A Tuftafffeta Speech”, printed in Sir Benjamin Rudyerd’s 1660 Le Prince d’Amour, and reprinted on page 100 of Louise Brown Osborn’s 1937 The Life, Letters, and Writings of John Hoskyns, 1566–1638 (published by the Yale University Press)

     [A]s the snow advanced vpon yᵉ poynts vertical of cacuminous mountains dissolveth and discoagulateth it self into humorous liquidity[.]

   • 1834: James Atkinson, Medical Bibliography, s.v. “Acerbi Joseph”, page 165

     Equally so as it ha been in his own, over the estuous rivers of Lapland, or its frozen and cacuminous mountains;

   • 1871, Mortimer Collins, Inn Street Meetings, page 10:

     Hours Of youth…and love ‛neath trees cacuminous.

   • ante 1879: Mortimer Collins, Pen Sketches by a Vanished Hand, volume 1, page 248

     Luminous books (not voluminous) To read under beech-trees cacuminous.

• cacuminal
• cacuminate
• cacumination

• “cacuminous, a.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd Ed.; 1989]