Hypsos

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A term denoting a heightened or elevated state or level; can refer to a peak or summit in both literal geography and metaphorical contexts such as emotion or intensity; also used in artistic or rhetorical analysis to indicate a climax or high point of tension
2. Describes an increased or raised condition, such as a physical elevation or a figurative rise in status, emotion, or intensity; often applied in literature and art to signify the apex of emotional or dramatic effect; occasionally denotes a topographical height or prominence
3. Represents a concept of uplift or rise, whether in terrain, feelings, or abstract states; pertains to the highest or most intense moment in various disciplines including rhetoric, art, and geography; implies a significant elevation or acme in physical or metaphorical terms

Etymology: In Greek, "hypsos" meant height in the most literal sense: the elevation of a mountain, the top of a tower, or the rise of something lifted up. Writers soon applied the same image to speech and writing, so that a lofty style was a high one. The treatise traditionally attributed to Longinus, "Peri hypsous," uses the word for the quality of elevated, moving language that lifts the reader out of the ordinary. English translators later rendered that quality as "the sublime." The sense of "peak of intensity" grows from the same picture. Height is a measure of how far something rises, and a rising line can stand for a rising feeling or force, so the word's spatial meaning became a way of describing the highest point of an experience. Only the spatial meaning is in the older Greek record, so the intensity sense is best read as a metaphor carried over from it.