also 7 achme, achma, 8–9 acmé, acmè. [a. Gr. ἀκμή point. Long consciously used as a Gr. word, and written in Gr. letters from Ascham, 1570, to Goldsmith, 1750, although spelt as Eng. by B. Jonson, 1625, and commonly afterwards.]
1. gen. The highest point or pitch; the culmination, or point of perfection, in the career or development of anything.
1570. Ascham, Scholem. (1863), 93. The Latin tong, even whan it was, as the Grecians say, in ἀκμῇ, that is, at the hiest pitch of all perfitenesse.
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Discov. So that he may be named, and stand as the mark and ἀκμή of our language.
1641. W. Cartwright, Lady Err., II. iv. (1651), 23. I’ th’ heat and achme of devotion.
1655. Fuller, Ch. Hist., III. 78. Date we from this day, the achme or vertical height of Abbeys, which henceforward began to stand still, & at last to decline.
1659. Lestrange, Alliance Div. Off., ix. The Liturgy and ceremonie of our Church, drawing nigh to its ἀκμή.
1675. Ogilby, Brit., Ded. In the Achma of the Three Last Empires of the World.
1765. Goldsm., Ess., Taste. By the age of ten his genius was at the ἀκμή.
1790. Burke, Fr. Revol., Wks. V. 236. The growth of population in France was by no means at its acmé in that year.
1800. Weems, Washington (1877), xi. 155. Having at length attained the acme of all his wishes.
1817. Malthus, Population, III. 57. No country has ever reached, or probably ever will reach, its highest possible acme of produce.
1835. I. Taylor, Spir. Despotism, § 5. 188. A position whence the transition was easy to the acmé of unbounded despotism.
1868. Gladstone, Juv. Mundi (1870), xi. 421. It is however in Achilles that courtesy reaches to its acmè.
1880. Boy’s Own Bk., 240. The acme of bicycle riding.
† 2. esp. a. The period of full growth, the flower or full-bloom of life. Obs.
1620. Venner, Via Recta, viii. 174. They haue not attained vnto the Acme, or full height of their growing.
1625. B. Jonson, Staple of News, Prol. (1631), 5. He must be one that can instruct your youth, And keepe your Acme in the state of truth.
1650. Bulwer, Anthropometam., § 22. 245. [It] may be either in the achma or declination of our age.
1660. T. Stanley, Hist. Philos. (1701), 259/2. Youth is the encrease of the first Refrigerative part, Age the decrease thereof, ἄκμη, the constant and perfect Life which is betwixt both.
1664. Evelyn, Sylva, 37. Every tree … after each seven years improving twelve pence in growth, till they arriv’d to their acme.
1844. Stanley, Arnold’s Life & Corr., II. x. 314. The thought that the forty-ninth year, fixed by Aristotle as the acme of the human faculties, lay still some years before him.
b. The point of extreme violence of a disease, the crisis. arch.
c. 1630. Jackson, Creed, VIII. xiii. Wks. VII. 496. Christ Jesus … in the very ἀκμὴ of his agony … did set the fairest copy of that obedience.
1676. Grew, Plants, Lect., II. i. § 26 (1682), 242. We may conceive the reason of the sudden access of an acute Disease, and of its Crisis … when the Cause is arrived unto such an ἀκμὴ.
1752. in Phil. Trans., XLVII. lxxiii. 586. From the beginning to the flatus or acme of the disease, they almost all die.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Revol. (1872), I. V. vi. 167. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy.
