penultmateLevel
Hi Steve,
I think it may be something that varies from region to region. It’s not a word I use in my everyday conversation, but I remember in college, two different professors who used penultimate all the time. One of them was from Germany, the other from Britain.
It’s not a problem… just a thought
Tks
In a Neal Stephenson novel, I saw “Antepenultimate”. Breaking it up, it must mean “third from last”.
I thought he might just have made that up but Wiktionary has it being used in the 1700s.
Yep, that’s how I’d interpret that, although it could be more broadly interpreted as sometime before the next to the last time.
It probably doesn’t help here in the States that we’ve completely lost the “final” part of “ultimate”, instead equating “ultimate” with "best.