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"Penultimate" is American slang for "really awesome"?

• antonvs 5y ago
  Nope. Parent was attempting a weird joke, which failed badly.
  • astrange 5y ago
    I think it's used in marketing sometimes because it sounds cool, so you'll assume it means something good if you don't understand it. Doesn't come up a lot though.
  • jogjayr 5y ago
    I don't get the joke. It seemed somewhat plausible or serious to me because "ultimate" is slang for "really cool" in India. (At least it was when I was growing up; who knows what the cool kids there say these days.) But I was puzzled because I've spent the majority of my adult life in North America, and never heard "penultimate" used that way.
    • antonvs 5y ago
      I was wrong. Apparently it is slang, in some places at least: > The word penultimate as a slang word seems to have worked its way into common parlance thanks to the slang use of the word ultimate. As a slang term, ultimate means cool rather than last. So the hipster logic may have concluded that if ultimate means cool, then penultimate must mean super cool. https://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/podcasts/grammar_grater/archive/2007/10/18/ https://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/podcasts/grammar_gra... I assumed the parent was making a joke that something like this would be the case. Turns out it really is. "Never underestimate the stupidity of..."