cacumen

Latin cacūmen

cacumen (plural cacumina)

1. (obsolete, physics) The smallest possible piece of matter, making up part of an atom.

Cognate to Sanskrit ककुद् (kakúd, “peak, summit, point; head, chief; hump, projection; palate, tongue”), which similarly preserves the original sense of projection in any direction, and the particular sense of the humped shoulders of an animal. The semantics of the denominal verb are influenced by acūmen.[1]

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /kaˈkuː.men/, [käˈkuːmɛn]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /kaˈku.men/, [käˈkuːmen]

cacūmen n (genitive cacūminis); third declension

1. peak, extremity, top, summit

   Synonyms: vertex, apex, culmen, fastīgium, summitās

   Antonym: fundus

2. end, limit

   Synonyms: līmes, fīnis, modus

3. (grammar) accent mark placed over a letter

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

• cacūminō

• English: cacuminous, cacuminal
• Italian: cacume

• “cacumen”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “cacumen”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• cacumen in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• cacumen in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.

Borrowed from Latin cacūmen.

• IPA^(key): /kaˈkumen/ [kaˈku.mẽn]
• Rhymes: -umen
• Syllabification: ca‧cu‧men

cacumen m (plural cacúmenes)

1. (colloquial) acumen
   • 1877, Benito Pérez Galdós, Gloria:

     Escopetas, carabinas, cuchillos, trampas, mil artificios ingeniosos, ora aprendidos, ora inventados por su propio genial cacumen, y que tenían por objeto apoderarse de la mitad del reino volátil, ocupaban una regular pieza.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. (obsolete) peak; summit

• “cacumen”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014