PINNACLE

PRONUNCIATION: (PIN-uh-kuhl)

MEANING: noun: 1. The highest point.
2. An architectural ornament capping a tower, buttress, etc.
verb tr.: 1. To reach the peak of achievement, development, etc.
2. To form a pinnacle.

ETYMOLOGY: From Old French, from Latin pinnaculum, diminutive of pinna (wing, feather). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pet- (to rush or fly), which also gave us feather, petition, compete, perpetual, pterodactyl, helicopter, appetence, asymptomatic, auricle, empennage, impetuous, pencel, peripeteia, petulant, propitious, pinnate, and lepidopterology (study of butterflies and moths). Earliest documented use: 1330.
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PINNOCLE - card game involving bidding and trick-taking, using a deck missing all cards from 2 to 8

PINNACHE - 1. pain in the outer ear; 2. flair, style, elan; 3. a leafy green vegetable reputed to be full of iron (it isn't) and Vitamin K (it is) and much admired by one pipe-smoking Sailor Man with very skinny upper arms

PIÑTACLE - a mystical symbol in the shape of a pineapple (alternatively, in the shape of a fifteenth-century seafaring craft)