consummate

Etymology

From Latin cōnsummātus, past participle of cōnsummāre (“to sum up, finish, complete”), from com- (“together”) + summa (“the sum”) (see sum, summation).

adj

1. Complete in every detail, perfect, absolute.
   […] Marmaduke, who had the consummate impudence to reply that […] 1880, George Bernard Shaw, “Chapter VII”, in The Irrational Knot
   Belinda Bellonia Bunting//Behaved like a consummate loon 1900, Guy Wetmore Carryl, The Singular Sangfroid of Baby Bunting
   England's first-half display was consummate in its control, Italy made to look decidedly average as Rice and Jude Bellingham controlled affairs and Kane made history. 23 March 2023, Phil McNulty, “Italy 1-2 England”, in BBC Sport
2. Supremely skilled and experienced; highly accomplished; fully qualified.
   a consummate sergeant
   Many of these works are of permanent value from their nobility and beauty of style and their intrinsic emotional significance, and all are characterized by high intellectual qualities, and consummate musicianship. 1900, John Comfort Filmore, Pianoforte Music: Its history, with Biographical Sketches and Critical Estimates of its Greatest Masters, Presser, page 17
   The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, […] ; thus it is in his power to control success. 1910, Lionel Giles (translator), The Art of War, Section IV (originally by Sun Tzu)

verb

1. (transitive) To bring (a task, project, goal etc.) to completion; to accomplish.
   Although it was agreed by all that discovery must be consummated by possession and use, […] 1921, James Truslow Adams, The Founding of New England, chapter III
   In one word, in perfumery the artist completes and consummates the original natural odour, which he cuts, so to speak, and mounts as a jeweller improves and brings out the water of a precious stone. 1926, chapter //dummy.host/index.php?title=s%3AAgainst+the+Grain%2FChapter+X X, in Against the Grain, translation of À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans
2. (transitive) To make perfect, achieve, give the finishing touch.
3. (transitive) To make (a marriage) complete by engaging in first sexual intercourse.
   the marriage was never consummated
   After the reception, he escorted her to the honeymoon suite to consummate their marriage.
   […] in the essay which he made the very first night to serve her so as to consummate the marriage he made a false move, […] 1890, Giovanni Boccaccio, “part 10”, in James MacMullen Rigg, transl., The Decameron, volume 2
   In Christian marriage, which implies the restoration, by Christ Himself, of marriage to its original indissolubility, there can never be an absolute divorce, at least after the marriage has been consummated; 1913, Augustinus Lehmkuhl, Walter George Smith, “Divorce”, in Catholic Encyclopedia
   In a 1739 case from Laifeng County, Hubei, the widow Zhang Shi (forty-five sui) was killed by her new second husband, Jiang Changyi (forty-three sui), when she refused to consummate her marriage with him. 2000, Matthew H. Sommer, “Widows in the Qing Chastity Cult: The Nexus of Sex and Property in Law and in Women's Lives”, in Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China, Stanford, Cali.: Stanford University Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 187
4. (intransitive) To become perfected, receive the finishing touch.