Penultimate

I'm not surprised a bit. Witness the pyrrhic victory thread and the passions it triggered (including from me).

 

I'd be willing to bet more people know what penultimate means than Pyrrhic. In fact, I didn't really realize penultimate was such a fancy word at all. Not sure I'd waste it in on a run-of-the-mill gamer. But a feature, or column, if it flowed with the rhythm and poetry of the sentence? I've got no problem with that.

 

I have no idea what Pyrrhic means, but I used Penultimate in a headline back in the spring.

Wasieulsky is penultimate
By Steve Ross
Staff Writer
Susie Wasieulsky proved to be the penultimate when she won the pentathlon at the adidas Invitational.

 

Senor Marquez,

She wouldn't have won. She would have finished seventh in an eight-woman field. Further, why not the hepultimate? Was this a modern pentathlon?

YHS, etc

 

Double ouch. Putting aside my enmity of penultimate, that's inexcusable pun-ishment on the hed and the copy. And the one in the copy is a fact error; she wasn't next to last, she was first.

 

Yeah. Wow.

 

PENULTIMATE STRIKES AGAIN!!!!

Bill Conlin in a PDN column about the Phillies. For your enjoyment...