The Latin word paenultĭmus came into Spanish as penultimate . This is how you qualify the one or that thing that is just before the last one .
The term is synonymous with penultimate . In this way, what is immediately preceding the last can be called penultimate or penultimate.
For example: "The Hungarian athlete finished penultimate" , "This is the penultimate chocolate in the box" , "Despite his efforts, the South African runner did not manage to get out of penultimate place" .
Let's take the case of a car competition that takes place with the participation of thirty drivers . Whoever starts in position number 29 , therefore, starts the race in penultimate place .
Let's now see how the NBA draft works. The draft is a process through which teams in the American Basketball League ( basketball ) choose players under the age of 23, securing their contracting rights. The election takes place in two rounds, and in each round thirty players are selected. The young man chosen in 29th place in the first round , in this context, is the penultimate basketball player chosen in said stage. The 59th pick, meanwhile, is the penultimate pick in the second round (and the draft in general).
The idea of penultimate appears in multiple areas beyond sports . Suppose a man has a can of chocolate cookies and every night before going to sleep he eats one. When you only have two cookies left and you choose one of them, you have taken the second to last one from the container . That is, there will only be one cookie left in the can (the last one).
There is also the term antepenultimate , which refers to the element that is behind the penultimate one. While this may seem too precise, to the point of not being necessary, in certain areas it is useful. For example, in the context of a board game in which part of the mechanics consists of taking elements such as cards or tokens from a group, knowing that there are very few left can be important for making a good strategic decision; In this case, one player can alert another that "that was the second to last" or "the second to last."
Generally, the idea of last has a negative nuance, either because it refers to the lowest position in a competition or because a resource is about to be exhausted. If we maintain this point of view, the penultimate element is preferable, although in a hierarchy it is still undesirable. For example, no one would want to come last or second to last in a race; however, second to last is always better.
Of course, outside of competitions and scores, the idea of penultimate can have a very different connotation. As mentioned above, when working with a limited resource it is necessary to establish certain rules to avoid its waste or excessive use; If we have to ration food packages in a quarantine, for example, reaching the penultimate one will be a cause for alert to get more.
In other contexts, we can use these terms to indicate the order in which we are in a line, for example, to take an exam or enter a building and express how tired we were waiting until we were finally served. In this case, finding yourself at the end of a list can be negative or positive, depending on each person's point of view and needs; For example, when taking an oral exam, not being among the first is ideal to acclimatize to the teachers' way of being and review the concepts that are most difficult for us based on the questions they ask others.