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penultimate

Pronunciation: /pɪˈnʌl.tɪ.mɪt/

The English word “penultimate” has 9 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Next to last, second to last; immediately preceding the end of a sequence, list, etc.
  2. Of or pertaining to a penult.
  3. Relating to or denoting an element of a related collection of curves that is arbitrarily close to a degenerate form.
  4. pre-eminent, ultimate, best; par excellence, top-quality

noun

  1. A penult, a next to last, particularly
  2. The penultimate day of a month.
  3. The penultimate syllable of a word or metrical line.
  4. The penultimate element of a collection of curves.
  5. The penultimate (next to lowest) card in a suit.

Etymology

From Latin paenultimus (“penultimate”) + -ate (adjective-forming suffix), from paene (“almost”) + ultimus (“last”). Equivalent to pene- + ultimate. Compare French pénultième.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.