What is "crowning"

Usage examples of "crowning".

They consisted of forts crowning a succession of rounded hills, and connected by earthen ramparts, loopholed houses, ditches, and an abattis of felled trees.

Once, for no reason other than intellectual curiosity, Adams rode to Windsor to call on the famous English astronomer Sir William Herschel, whose crowning achievement had been the discovery of the planet Uranus.

El-Wijh, both beflagged, the round Burj of the fort, and the cubical white-washed lighthouse crowning its rocky point.

And lower, through a provocative veil of mist and water, he caught a glimpse of the dark curls crowning her thighs.

Vigor brand Russian-made condoms, a few soiled, dogeared cards from less-than-reputable Moscow clubs known for the sexual hijinks that took place in private back rooms--Tarnapolsky had a small collection of such cartes de vi site--and, the crowning touch, a half-used tube of ointment customarily used to treat the topical manifestation of certain more benign sexually communicable diseases.

When they came into the square, he saw that the entire expanse was filled with a multitude, the people who lived in Gent and those who had walked a day or even three days to the city in order to witness the anointing and crowning of the new king and to receive the bread that would be distributed in the wake of the ceremony.

To the surprise of most of his hearers--and to the satisfaction of the suspicious--there was no word of the recent crowning mercies, save a perfunctory mention in the opening prayer.

Then, beseeching Pandarus soon to perform out the great enterprise of crowning his love for Cressida, Troilus bade his friend good night.

During this period he was guilty of that crowning folly, the acceptance of the Rectorship of the Gymnasium at Padua, he felt the sharpest stings of poverty, and his life was overshadowed by dire physical misfortune.

I was reckoning upon the carnival, which was close at hand, feeling certain that the more I should spare her delicacy, the more she would endeavour to find the opportunity of rewarding my loyalty, and of crowning with happiness my loving constancy.

Sometimes delicacy, sometimes respect or duty, interfered to prevent the crowning pleasure, and I took care to observe, at such moments of disappointment, that a true lover does not require that all important item to feel perfectly happy.

But it does seem to be what he believes will eventually be his crowning achievement.

He assured Ham that all his forebears had been pig-eaters, which was a crowning insult.

The third time, because the feeling of pity, with which I inspired the beloved object, induced her to cure me of my passion, instead of crowning my felicity.

Bible, a bloodsoaked major's cockade crowning a sightless eyeball and the faintly heaving breasts of despoiled nudity faded away before the sparkling overtures of a sometime movie star pursuing the active life with a tennis racket no longer hampered by incontinence, and they woke to the clatter of glassware on a kitchen tray.