I’ve never heard culmination. We had kindergarten graduation and eighth grade graduations. (Chicago suburbs, 1950s) In the small town in which I now live there are no ceremonies until the end of high school.
Exactly. You are graduating. You passed the test (whether a specific test or not) necessary to move on to the next grade. Not everyone does.
This is how I’ve always thought of it. It’s like a “graduated” cylinder in a lab. You graduate…up to the next grade. And they do give you a diploma of sorts when you graduate elementary or middle school. Long ago when more districts used K8-4 schemes, the grade school diploma might actually says that the student can now attend high school, or that he/she doesn’t need to pass an examination first.
I found Linus Pauling’s grade school diploma from 1914. It’s interesting to recall that the eighth grade was probably as far as most people went in 1914.
I suggest the correct term should be “rounding.” It’s a “rounding ceremony.”
You round first, second … fifth grade… eighth grade… power slide into twelfth and it’s a home run! Graduation!
I suspect the same may be true of some other divergent word-pairs, e.g. “autumn”/“fall”. Aside from writers and speakers who hailed from overseas, I don’t recall hearing anyone say “autumn” for “fall” other than primary grade teachers. To this day, if I stop to think about it, that word reminds me of my kindergarten teacher when she was about to read us a “poim”.
My youngest grandson just underwent a promotion ceremony, from pre-K to K. I am sure I had a graduation ceremony after 8th grade and HS. After that, we had commencements. And McGill confers degrees at a convocation. (As well, they make us emeritus at a convocation.)
As for “sick” well to some people at least it means throwing up. However, I always used it rather than “ill”.