Definition of "anticlimax" []

• A decline viewed in disappointing contrast with a previous rise: the anticlimax of a brilliant career. (noun)
• Something trivial or commonplace that concludes a series of significant events: After a week of dramatic negotiations, all that followed was anticlimax. (noun)
• A sudden descent in speaking or writing from the impressive or significant to the ludicrous or inconsequential, or an instance of it: "Waggish non-Yale men never seem weary of calling 'for God, for Country and for Yale' the outstanding single anticlimax in the English language” ( Time). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Any event stages or sponsored by them is gonna be an exercise in anticlimax, no matter what."
• "I think this is what you might call an anticlimax."
• "I can't agree at all that the finale was any kind of anticlimax though!"