What is Penultimate ?

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Penultimate means ‘next to last’ or the ‘second last’ one. It is easy to confuse the word penultimate with last or ultimate or often misused to mean more than the ultimate.But the word “ultimate” which may mean the “best” or “last” does not have the same meaning when it appears in the word “penultimate”. Instead it means ‘next to last’.

What is the origin of the word Penultimate?

The word penultimate has its origin in 1670-80 from the earlier word, penultima. In Linguistics, it refers to a penult which is the “next to the last syllable in a word”. The division of a syllable is generally identified as initial, antepenult, penult and final syllable. Penultimate is derived from the Latin “paenultima syllaba”( paene ultima) which means “almost the last” The penultimate syllable in the word penultimate is “ti” whereas “mate” is the last syllable.

How is the term Penultimate used?

The word penultimate is used with reference to episodes in a TV show,  collection of books in a series  or chapters of a novel. While referring to a penultimate episode of a t.v. series or penultimate scene of a drama; it basically means the second last one. The antepenultimate episodes of a TV show appear before the penultimate or before the ‘next to last’. The word antepenultimate may commonly be misused to mean the opposite of ultimate or something less than ultimate. Though in fact, it means the appearance of an episode before the ‘second last’ of the series.

What does a penultimate novel mean?

A penultimate novel refers to the novel next to last in a series of novels as in the case of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” which is regarded as the sixth and penultimate novel of a series of seven books. In a trilogy (a series of three), the penultimate novel is regarded as the second of three books. Similarly in the popular collection, “The Chronicles of Narnia”, a series of seven children’s books by C.S. Lewis, the penultimate or sixth novel is “The Magician’s Nephew” while the novel, “The Last Battle” is the last novel in the series.

What are the context examples of the word penultimate?

• The readers come to know of the role of the antagonist in the penultimate chapter of the novel.
• The teenagers rejoiced in the penultimate year of their campus life.
• OF the thirty chapters in the novel, I enjoyed reading the twenty-ninth chapter which is the penultimate chapter of the book containing interesting anecdotes. 

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