It's the Word of the Day podcast for October 13th.
Today's word is penultimate, spelled P-E-N-U-L-T-I-M-A-T-E.
Penultimate is an adjective.
It means occurring immediately before the last one, or in other words, next to last.
A formal adjective, it's always used before the noun it modifies.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Plano star courier.
The high school soccer playoffs are down to their penultimate round,
with the state semifinals looming later this week after a select few regional champions were crowned on Tuesday.
Penultimate isn't the last word in words for things that are next to last.
It has a pair of closely related noun synonyms, penult and penultima.
Although all three concern something that's next to last,
penult and penultima are usually a bit more specific.
They're used most often to identify the next to last syllable of a word.
All three come from the word pineultima, the feminine of pineultumus,
a Latin root from pina, meaning almost, and ultimus, meaning last.
You may occasionally hear the word penultimate used as an intensified version of the word ultimate,
as in a race they've called the penultimate challenge.
This use isn't typically found in edited prose, however, or in our dictionaries.
As discussed in a video, you can see at mariamwebster.com.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.