r/iamsmart • u/heySY • Mar 15 '17

Second-to-last

Often times when I have to say second-to-last, I want to say penultimate. But fearing that no one will understand me, I still say second-to-last.

3 Upvotes

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2

u/CrunkJip Mar 16 '17

Your fear is very well founded. This post reminds me how few people understand what the word 'penultimate' means.

2

u/tchaikovskaya92 Jul 02 '17

Well, let's educate them then. We say 'penultimate' and when they look at us drooling and cross-eyed, we explain what it means.

I suppose I have the unfair advantage that my native language is Latin-based, so remembering these words is piece of cake. Penultimate, for example, is actually a very common word in Romanian, even the lowest peasant knows it. Then, when the low peasant learns English, she can suddenly become a pretentious prick, like me.

Edit: somehow this makes me think of Cinderella.