Penultimate is a word subject to common misuse. Many people use penultimate to mean ultimate or greater than ultimate. In fact, penultimate means second to last, or next to last. Thus it is not the ultimate, but the next to ultimate.

For example in the word penultimate “ti” is the penultimate syllable. The last syllable is “mate.” This is often called the penult or penultima syllable. A series of books would have a penultimate volume, usually meaning the next to last volume. This was made quite clear in Lemony Snicket’s The Penultimate Peril.

Snicket, a penname, frequently used the Series of Unfortunate Events to discuss literary terms, word usage, and word definitions. As well as the alliterative title, Snicket no doubt also meant to instruct with his title of The Penultimate Peril. In fact the book resulted in some confusion for children who thought it was the last book in the series because of the word, penultimate, in the title. However, the abrupt ending quickly disillusioned them of their incorrect definition of the word.

In series of books or television the antepenultimate chapters precede the penultimate chapter. Antepenultimate is defined as coming before the next to last. Some might also interpret this as less than ultimate, or the antithesis of ultimate. In fact, it merely means that it occurs before the second to last section of a series.

An antepenult is the third to last syllable from the end of a word. Using the word penultimate as example, “ul” would be the antepenult. These terms for syllables are usually used in linguistics and may be also used in some grammar classes. Generally however, one sees most frequent usage of the words ultimate and penultimate in more broad applications of the English language.

Any series can use the term penultimate to mean second to last. For example, the previous paragraph was the penultimate paragraph of this piece. To restate, penultimate is never the last, and should not be used as such. This paragraph, which concludes this piece, is not the penultimate paragraph, but is instead the ultimate and final paragraph.