The "ultimate" series refers more often to syllables in a word than pages in a book.
bThe "ultimate" series refers more often to syllables in a word than pages in a book:cross:
I don't see how the OED definition justifies your opinion:ABut I will gladly seize on the OED's note 5jj has quoted as justification for my opinion.
The "ultimate" series refers more often to syllables in a word than pages in a book.
Nor do I, but life's sometimes too short... ;-)I don't see how the OED definition justifies your opinion:
Perhaps so. I have seen it, admittedly rarely, in other contexts.I repeat that my assertion was based on my sense of English, and that I was thinking of "antepenultimate" as opposed to the others. "Antepenultimate" is a rare word, and the only place I myself have ever seen it, other than discussions of lexicographic frequency, is Latin grammar books in the chapters on prosody.
Quite. However you wrote "The "ultimate" series refers more often to syllables in a word than pages in a book" and that is what people responded to. You provided no other context for the words to be taken out of.I agree my first statement may have been overgeneralized if taken out of context. "Ultimate" and "penultimate" certainly are not restricted to syllables.
Well some of us do not agree with you about 'antepenultimate'. And, as far as that word is concerned, neither do the OED or Webster's Third.Once "antepenultimate" and "preantepenultimate" (not "pro-", by the way) are added, however -- as they were -- the context becomes distinctly syllabic. That is what I wrote, and I stand by my assertion.
Your statement in post #5 needed to be flatly contradicted. It is not true of 'ultimate' itself' or of 'penultimate'. You said yourself, in a later post, " I was thinking specifically of "antepenultimate". What was contradicted was what you wrote, not what you say you were thinking. Nobody here is a mind-reader.What bothers me most, however, is the flatness of contradiction.
You then went on to make a claim about 'antepenultimate' based on a dictionary definition of 'antepenult'.
In the style common here: flatly wrong :-|. Or, perhaps to soften it: the definition I quoted said "third from the end" and then felt necessary to reference a usage relating to "antepenult", ie, the syllable third from the end. Imagine a word "wergitty" the definition of which says:
(1) white (2) or of referring to a wergitt. Wergitt: white box.
Would it not be fair to conclude the most common usage of "wergitty" is "a wergitty box"? I think so.