Thursday night represented the biggest step of the comeback, if not the culmination.
With Gustav Mahler, the central path, if not the culmination, of Viennese symphony was regained.
But when Mr. Obama walked into the Rose Garden on Friday morning, having just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — an honor that would normally be a moment of high celebration, if not the culmination of a life's work — he was humble and self-deprecatory, popping a hole in the balloon of his own accomplishment.
"If this is the culmination of his career, he may well rise to the occasion".
If this was the culmination of the Lovie Smith era, the final chapter was going to be something resembling a Daniel Snyder-Washington Redskins flurry of cash-happy free-agent signings and bold offensive overhauls.
I didn't know who got me in trouble for what, or if it was just the culmination of my assorted misdeeds, but it doesn't really matter.
If The Avengers marked the culmination of the studio's world-building efforts in the previous wave of movies (beginning with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk in '08), then The Winter Soldier is all about tearing down bits of that world just to keep us from getting too complacent.
If they pass muster at the culmination of the pilot, these Web courses could eventually be used to teach the universities own undergraduates or expand the UC student body by appealing to new audiences, easing bottlenecks in crowded campuses or providing a desperately needed revenue stream.
If anything, his current post is the culmination of a pastoral lifetime, as he brings two groups together.
It's the culmination of months, if not years of training.
