Dec
20
Antepenultimate
Filed Under A
I have always liked the sound of penultimate. It is fun (and a bit pretentious) to use, but antepenultimate is even more so. In addition, although I would choose “third from last” for the item preceding the next-to-last item, I have encountered multiple people who call the item before the next-to-last one the “second-to-last” one. That gives me the excuse of using antepenultimate in order to eliminate any ambiguity.
Charlie Livingston
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This is a true epiphany for me. I’d always assumed that penultimate was the coolest word ever, yet this one gives me pause.
…even more pretentious then is ‘preantepenultimate’ for the one before this one!
‘Antepenultimate’ takes me fondly back nearly fifty years, to when my grandfather taught me the rudiments of cryptic crossword puzzling. When he nutted this one out, stretching right across all 15 squares, I was hooked. I could hardly believe there was a word for such an obscure thing, let alone that Pop could come up with it…