[ANTI- 2.]
1. Rhet. The opposite of climax: ‘a sentence in which the last part expresses something lower than the first’ J.; the addition of a particular which, instead of heightening the effect, suddenly lowers it or makes it ludicrous.
1727. Pope, etc., Art of Sinking, 101. The Anti-Climax … ‘And thou Dalhoussy the great God of war, Lieutenant colonel to the Earl of Mar.’
1796. Boswell, Johnson (1816), III. 418. I objected also to what appeared an anticlimax of praise.
1842. Dickens, Amer. Notes (1850), 141/1. The stupendous silliness of certain stanzas with an anti-climax at the end of each.
2. By extension: A descent or fall in contrast to a previous rise.
1858. Lewes, Sea-side Studies, 42. I think of the Hunter’s finale as merely an extra dish, and pronounce that to be an anticlimax to his day’s work.
1879. McCarthy, Own Times, II. xviii. 35. The later years of his life were only an anticlimax.
