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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I mentioned the word “penultimate” in passing in another post but thought it deserved its own mention as a slip/innovation/reshaping—I’m not exactly sure which.
We’re all familiar with peoples’ love for superlative suffixes and prefixes to add emphasis to their writing. For instance, a person might not just have tons of work, but megatons. So it’s not surprising that when someone is impressed by something, it’s not simply good enough to refer to it as “the ultimate,” but—with a little added enthusiasm—“the penultimate!” Unfortunately, “penultimate” really means “next to the last” (rather than “last”). So, it’s almost like praising someone for taking second place rather than first! To me, that sounds like a bit of malapropism.
The other point I’d like to make on this topic is with regards to pen-, which I had assumed to play the role of a prefix, but it doesn’t seem to be listed as such in at least one dictionary I have checked. Under the heading “penumbra,” we see that “pen” derives from L paene meaning “almost.” Perhaps someone could shed extra light on this. (Pun partly intended).
Usage example:
Sad goodbye to Mare Chiaro – Mouthfuls
The penultimate insult was a large photograph of “Tony Soprano”, signalling unmistakeably that what had once been a Little Italy bar had now become a …
www.mouthfulsfood.com/forums/index.php?showtopic… – 75k – Similar pages
http://www.mouthfulsfood.com/forums/ind … are+chiaro
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Hi Jorkel
I went and looked at the OED’s entry for the prefix pene-. Besides “penultimate,” “penumbra,” “peneplane,” “penintime” (“innermost but one”—sorta like “penultimate,” but for centrality), “peninsula” (“almost an island”) and “penisle” (also peninsula), there were a number of obsolete or obsolescent terms: peneperfection, penefelonious, peneinfinite, peneomnipotent, penelake (I like that one), and peneseismic. Here are the OED entries for the latter bunch:
A1. Used with the sense of ‘nearly, almost, all but’ to form adjectives and nouns.
pene-perfection n. Obs.
1810 S. T. COLERIDGE Notebks. (1973) III. 3901 The perfection, or even *pene-perfection of the Methodists.
pene-felonious adj. Obs.
1890 ‘R. BOLDREWOOD’ Colonial Reformer (1891) 82 ‘Lots’, said the *pene-felonious traveller{em}‘good place to camp’.
pene-infinite adj. Obs.
1647 N. WARD Simple Cobler Aggawam 47 These *pene-infinite [later edd. pen-infinite] insolencies, which are the most finite Infinites of misery to men.
peneomnipotent adj. Obs.
1894 Blackwood’s Mag. June 822 That *peneomnipotent thing, public opinion.
pene-lake n. Obs. an expanse of water almost surrounded by land.
1668 BP. J. WILKINS Ess. Real Char. 54 *Pene-lake, Haven, Harbour, Port, Key.
peneseismic adj. [after French pénéséismique (F. de Montessus de Ballore Géogr. Séismologique (ed. 2, 1905) 11)] Seismol. (now rare) (of a region) in which earthquakes occur infrequently and with little or no destructive force.
1906 Geogr. Jrnl. 27 401 Outlying seismic districts are, New Zealand,..Florida, the Indus delta, the hills of Madagascar and Central Abyssinia; with the exception of the coast districts of Morocco and Algiers this is the only seismic district in Africa, a continent which is, as a whole, *peneseismic or aseismic. 1921 C. DAVISON Man. Seismol. x. 161 Peneseismic countries, in which earthquakes are severe, but fall short of destructive power.
I’m not sure much light-shedding was done, but I learned a bunch of obsolete terms.
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