Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Weird Word Wednesday: Penultimate

Today's weird word is Penultimate. It means second to last. I'm not sure how I would actually apply this word to my day. I guess I could threaten my kids with an extra warning before the final warning. As in "this is the penultimate time I'm going to tell you!" Or, if my kids ask me what place their team came in, I can make it sound better by saying "you came in the penultimate place!" Other than that, I can't really think of practical times it would come in handy.

Would anyone ever tell their spouse that the person they dated before them was their penultimate date? If you wanted the person in charge of the TV remote to go to the previous channel, would you ask them to go back to the penultimate one? They probably wouldn't understand what you were asking and you'd wind up missing it by the time you finished explaining all of it.

Readers, please help me find a natural way of using penultimate. I have new knowledge and I want to use it! =)

pe·nul·ti·mate  (p-nlt-mt)
adj.
1. Next to last.
2. Linguistics Of or relating to the penult of a word: penultimate stress.


=J

p.s. Don't forget! If you tweet or send us an idea for a Weird Word Wednesday word and we use it, we will give you credit in our post!

2 comments:

  1. Between you and my 5th grader, I am getting a huge vocabulary lesson this week. :)

    Stopping in from momnbaby.com

    PS-I laugh at your title because I work in a local cafe. Never drank coffee until I started there. Love it now!

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  2. Hi Jen - Thanks for stopping by and learning a new word! I hope this isn't the penultimate time you'll do so! lol

    The name came from my girlfriends and I meeting on Saturday morning to walk and then wrapping it up at a coffee house. We started with smaller sizes, but ultimately all agreed we needed venti's. Truth be known, my favorite is a no water, soy chai. =)

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