GC: n
S: Infoplease – http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/acme.html (last access: 22 March 2016); STUD – http://study.com/academy/lesson/progress-of-disease-infection-to-recovery.html (last access: 22 March 2016).
N: 1. “highest point,” 1560s, from Greek akme “(highest) point, edge; peak of anything,” from PIE root *ak- “sharp” (see acrid). Written in Greek letters until c. 1620. The U.S. grocery store chain was founded 1891 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
ACME (Gr. α̉κμή, point), the highest point attainable; first used as an English word by Ben Jonson.
2. The critical stage or crisis of a disease.
3. As nouns the difference between disease and acme is that disease is (pathology) an abnormal condition of the body or mind that causes discomfort or dysfunction; distinct from injury insofar as the latter is usually instantaneously acquired while acme is the top or highest point; pinnacle; culmination.
As a verb disease is (obsolete) to cause unease; to annoy, irritate.
4. Cultural Interrelation: What Does ACME Mean?
- The dictionary definition is: “the top”, or “the highest point”, or just “perfection”. This is straight from Greek. (Greek mythology also includes a nymph named Acme.)
- Apparently some early business school textbooks liked to use Acme as a business name in some of their examples.
- There’s a story that the business school use is an acronym, standing for “A Company Manufacturing Everything”. This is probably false etymology.
- Sears-Roebuck used Acme as one of their in-house brand names in the early 1900s, just like they use “Craftsman” today. For instance, take a look at this ad for an Acme anvil from the 1902 Sears catalog.
- Warner Brothers apparently took the name from Sears and used it for the mail-order company in the Wile E. Coyote cartoons.
Other pages of interest to the student of ACME:
- Other ACMEs on the Web
- The ACME Calendar
- The Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products
S: 1. OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=acme (last access: 22 March 2016); Wikisource – https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Acme (last access: 19 November 2023). 2. TFD – http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/acme (last access: 19 November 2023). 3. DB – http://the-difference-between.com/acme/disease (last access: 22 March 2016). 4. ACME – http://acme.com/what_is_acme/ (last access: 19 November 2023).
SYN:
S:
