English

Adjective

pænultimate ‎(not comparable)

1. Archaic spelling of penultimate.
   • 1942, Tromsø Museums Skrifter (Universitetsførlaget), volume 3, page 454

     […] pereiopods 5 — 7 slender, with slender, drepaniform fingers, and with the pænultimate joints each provided with a spine on the hind margin […]

   • 1964, Gershon Legman, The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (University Books), page 163

     Whether the manuscripts were ‘Original’ or simply copies, the last half of the statement is certainly true, since this edition first prints a version of “for a’ that,” called “the bonniest lass” in ed. 1959, p. 69, which all critics agree is unquestionably by Burns, and which is, in that case, the closest he ever came to an apology or tu quoque for his erotic songs, in the pænultimate chorus on King Solomon: ‘The smuttiest sang that e’er was sung, his Sang o’ Sangs is a’ that.’

   • 1966, Victor Henry Mattfeld, Georg Rhaw’s Publications for Vespers (Institute of Mediaeval Music), page 296

     A second type of colouration which occurs much more frequently and is much more significant is that which consists of a melismatic insertion prior to the ultimate or pænultimate note of a cadence or after an accent in either the Mediatio or Finalis.

   • 1968, Vernon Perdue Davis, A Primer of Ancient Hymnody (E. C. Schirmer Music Co.), page 55

     Whole phrases (like the pænultimate one in Sanctorum meritis (Sarum 51)) are sometimes completely scalar.

   • 1988, Karl-Reinhart Trauner, Security and Independency: The Third Reich as the Myth of the XXth Century?, “From Neo-absolutism to Conciliation?”, page 33

     The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) expressed this idea when he said that humankind is living in the time “before the last” (pænultimate), and this can never have absolute validity.