It's the Word of the Day podcast for October 13th.

Today's word is penultimate, spelled P-E-N-U-L-T-I-M-A-T-E. Penultimate is an adjective.

It means occurring immediately before the last one,

or in other words, next to last. A formal adjective, it's always used before the noun it modifies.

Here's the word used in a sentence from the Plano Star Courier. The high school soccer

playoffs are down to their penultimate round,

with the state semifinals looming later this week after a select few regional champions were

crowned on Tuesday. Penultimate isn't the last word and words for things that are next to last.

It has a pair of closely related noun synonyms, penult and penultima. Although all three concerns something that's next to last, penult and penultima are usually a bit more specific. They're used most often to identify the next to last syllable of a word. All three come from the word pinultuma, the feminine of

pinultumus, a Latin root from pina, meaning almost, and ultimus, meaning last. You may occasionally

hear the word penultimate used as an intensified version of the word ultimate, as in a race

they've called the penultimate

challenge. This use isn't typically found in edited prose, however, or in our dictionaries.

As discussed in a video, you can see at mariumwebster.com. With your word of the day, I'm

Peter Sokolowski.

Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.