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> They live and breathe biology, and their penultimate goal in life is to have some sort of fundamental impact on the field at large. But what's their ultimate
by titanomachy 2y ago
> They live and breathe biology, and their penultimate goal in life is to have some sort of fundamental impact on the field at large.
But what's their ultimate goal??
"Penultimate" means second-to-most-important. It's not some kind of modifier that means "extra ultimate".
- abhishaike 2y agodumb wording on my part! fixed :)
- karmakurtisaani 2y agoNow that you point it out, it would be pretty cool to have a word for "extra ultimate".
- leoc 2y agoThat would probably be ‘perultimate’ (see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per-#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/per-#Latin ). Mind you, since ‘ultimate’ means ‘last’ it’s not clear what this word would actually mean.
- karmakurtisaani 2y agoIt would of course mean the really extremely last. In other words, abusing language is fun.