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Penultimate means second to last, not last. It is also used in linguistics to refer to the second to last syllable of a word. The terms antepenult and ultima are also used. It is often misused to mean the greatest or largest.
Although many people mistakenly use the term penultimate to mean the last or greatest of the last, it actually means penultimate or penultimate. So it’s not last but next to last. For example, the penultimate chapter of a book would be the penultimate chapter, or the penultimate book in a series of books would be the penultimate volume. The term is also used as a specialized term in linguistics to refer to the penultimate syllable of a word.
In linguistics
The term penultimate is used in linguistics and grammar books to refer to a particular syllable in a word: the penultimate or penultimate. This is the penultimate syllable of any word, for example “la” in “syllable”. This is in contrast to the antepenult, which is the syllable before the penult, and the ultima, which is the last syllable of each word. Using the word “syllable” again as an example, “sy” would be the antepenult, “la” would be the penultimate, and “ble” would be the last. Linguists often use these terms to indicate where the stress on a word should be; for example, in American English the word “revelation” is stressed on the penultimate syllable.
In wider use
Penultimate isn’t just limited to using grammar. It can be used to refer to anything that is the second to last in a series, such as the second to last child in a family, the second to last carriage on a train, or the second to last box of cereal left on a supermarket shelf. It can also be used to describe this paragraph, the penultimate one in this article. The terms antepenult and ultima can also be used in everyday life, but “ultimate” is more commonly used than “antepenultimate”
Often used incorrectly
Misuse of the word is extremely common, with people tending to use it to refer to something that is either extremely large or far beyond the maximum. Some companies even use the penultimate term in their advertising to make a product look even better than the final version of the product, but this is a mistake.
