pinnacle vs spire

pinnacle

noun
  • The highest point. 

  • An upright member, generally ending in a small spire, used to finish a buttress, to constitute a part in a proportion, as where pinnacles flank a gable or spire. 

  • Coordinate term: sea stack 

  • A tall, sharp and craggy rock or mountain. 

  • An all-time high; a point of greatest achievement or success. 

verb
  • To place on a pinnacle. 

  • To build or furnish with a pinnacle or pinnacles. 

spire

noun
  • The top, or uppermost point, of anything; the summit. 

  • A tapering structure built on a roof or tower, especially as one of the central architectural features of a church or cathedral roof. 

  • One of the sinuous foldings of a serpent or other reptile; a coil. 

  • A young shoot of a plant; a spear. 

  • A tube or fuse for communicating fire to the charge in blasting. 

  • A spiral. 

  • The part of a spiral generated in one revolution of the straight line about the pole. 

  • Any of various tall grasses, rushes, or sedges, such as the marram, the reed canary-grass, etc. 

  • A sharp or tapering point. 

verb
  • to sprout, to send forth the early shoots of growth; to germinate. 

  • To furnish with a spire. 

  • To grow upwards rather than develop horizontally. 

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