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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
anticlimax
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ After all the hype, the actual concert was something of an anticlimax.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Having looked forward with anticipation to the Bölkow, I wondered whether I might find it an anticlimax.
▪ It turned into something of an anticlimax.
▪ She tried to dismiss the odd feeling of anticlimax she was experiencing.
▪ There was a vague sense of anticlimax mingled with her vast feeling of freedom.
▪ Within a few months she would solo, in a flight that was a bit of an anticlimax.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Anticlimax

Anticlimax \An`ti*cli"max\, 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.

Note: Example:

Next comes Dalhousie, the great god of war, Lieutenant-colonel to the Earl of Mar.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
anticlimax

"the addition of a particular which suddenly lowers the effect," 1701, from anti- + climax (n.).

Wiktionary
anticlimax

n. A break in the final crescendo or climax of a narrative, producing a disappointing end.

WordNet
anticlimax
  1. n. a disappointing decline after ad previous rise; "the anticlimax of a brilliant career"

  2. a change from a serious subject to a disappointing one [syn: bathos]

Wikipedia
Anticlimax (book)

Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution is a 1990 book about the sexual revolution by Sheila Jeffreys.

Anticlimax (gastropod)

Anticlimax is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Tornidae within the superfamily Truncatelloidea.

Usage examples of "anticlimax".

It would have been such an anticlimax to turn back now, and yet her first taste of the real flavor of Africa had been disconcerting.

They all stared after it silently, seized by a sense of anticlimax, until Sean broke the spell.

It was something of an anticlimax to observe, on the right-hand side of the pylon, a smaller male figure presenting an ankhthe symbol of lifeto the nose of a seated king.

What an anticlimax it would be when the defenders of the fort were found to be dead!

It was rather an anticlimax, after their desperate escape, to pull away from the curb unmolested and cruise down the side street as if they had no where to go and all day to get there.

By the time they got there, the actual sight of the print was something of an anticlimax to Drai.

Hokan taste, it was almost an anticlimax after the glorious victory of the fictional Casey when the factual one playfully tapped a home run over the left field fence and won the Sector pennant.

I enjoy the expectation with which the top is wrenched off the can of worms as if from some amazing birthday present, and then the sense of anticlimax in the watching faces: the forced tears and skimpy, gloating pity, the cued and dutiful applause.

And if on the other hand nothing at all is accomplished in twenty or thirty stagnant years - how distasteful is anticlimax to the young!

The final three cableway flights are anticlimax, noted only for the beauty of the moonlight on the peaks and ridges around us, and for the difficulty I have in closing my frozen fingers on the D-ring brakes.

This was an anticlimax, this real drama ending so mundanely in a harborside apartment.

Fielder - Flemming will have to be content to pile up so many anticlimaxes.

Long before Stephen saw the San Josef taken squarely aback, losing her maintopgallantmast with the shock, Jack realized that Mitchell's ships were being headed by the wind: he had seen the quivering weather-leeches, he had divined the furious bracing of the yards and the hauling of the bowlines, and he had measured the increasing gap between the English and the French, and it was clear to him that the advanced ships' slanting approach to the enemy could not succeed - that the long chase must end in slow disappointment and anticlimax.

There are those who feel that Marvin's end was untimely and a bit of an anticlimax considering his eventful life full of narrow escapes, close shaves and apathetic encounters.

A moment later, the roar of one of Alkides’s eighteens was almost an anticlimax.