Word Gymnastics
Today I discovered a new word:
Antepenultimate
Say what?
I read it as part of a passage in a book, and although I guessed what it might be, it was one of those words I had to look up to be sure. It then made me investigate further. How many more are there?
Meaning
antepenultimate is defined as third from last. As an example, in the word learning the antepenultimate letter is i
Others
I did some further research to see how far I could go.
- Ultimate: Last, Final
- Penultimate: Second last
- Antepenultimate: Third last
- Preantepenultimate Fourth from last
- Propreantepenultimate Fifth from last
It appears to stop at Five.
And in the opposite direction, known as Latinate ordinals, we have
- Primary
- Secondary
- Tertiary
- Quartary or quaternary
- Quintary or, quinary
- Senary
- Septenary
- Octonary
- Nonary
- Denary
The general acceptance is to stop at 10th (Denary), but there are two more for 11 and 12 and the potential to keep going with Latin prefixes! Sounds tedious.
So there you go -- Things I learned today
This post is part of Thom's challenge to post about "Things I Learned Today" during November.
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