culmination vs maximum

culmination

noun
  • Attainment or arrival at the highest pitch of glory, power, etc. 

  • The attainment of the highest point of altitude reached by a heavenly body; passage across the meridian; transit. 

  • Endpoint (usually good) arrived at after some series of actions or events, or some period , usually after the series or period has ended. The sum of something. 

  • A ceremony marking the completion of studies at an elementary school, middle school or junior high school, the term "graduation" being reserved for high school. 

maximum

noun
  • The highest limit. 

  • A scoring shot for 6 runs. 

  • The greatest value of a set or other mathematical structure, especially the global maximum or a local maximum of a function. 

  • A 147 break; the highest possible break. 

  • A score of 180 with three darts. 

  • An upper bound of a set which is also an element of that set. 

  • The largest value of a batch or sample or the upper bound of a probability distribution. 

adj
  • To the highest degree. 

How often have the words culmination and maximum occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )