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Comment by paulgb | Hacker News Reader

I hate to be pedantic, but "penultimate" means "second last", which doesn't seem to be the intended use here.

That's funny. The only reason I checked the comments is to see if I was the only one that caught this. :)

I just figured the "ultimate" guide is to unplug from the internet.

It could simply be that it is the penultimate guide for the time being. They know full well someone may come along and best it.

It's not being pedantic. The word was used incorrectly, as that word often is. It's worth correcting so the author and others are made aware.

btw in Italian the only way to say "second last" is "penultimo" and I guess in most other european languages should sound the same, so a lot of non mother tongue English readers are going to read this as "second last" anyway, completely missing the "very ultimate" (mis)meaning.

The Romance languages do not make a majority of the European languages, and I would expect your comment to only hold for Romance languages.

That said, the only person I ever heard use the word correctly in person was a Brazilian. I don't think that is a coincidence.

ack, sorry I meant "most romance languages".

The "ultimate guide to x" would have sound to pretentious, so to be humble and as an attempt to humor they choose this title (usually a guide is "ultimate" until a next and better guide come out). Seems a reasonable explanation...

I thought that seemed awkward. What do you think they intend to mean?

My guess is "ultimate". Admittedly, "penultimate" is a cooler-sounding word.

All words are cool if you don't know what they mean. If the reader knows what it means but the writer doesn't, the effects are less predictable and desirable.

I disagree. I don't know what "venial" means, but I don't think it sounds as cool as "penultimate" :-)

well not knowing what venial means is venial after all.

I'd upvote you, but then you'd know I was lying (which isn't as venial).

Penultimate has this in common with "literally". It's most often misused to mean the opposite of what's intended.

Cue Inigo Montoya.

I'm not entirely sure if "next-to-last" and "last" can be described as opposites, though :-)

Well, there is this: Opposites are a tricky concept, not well-defined in most domains. Your implication is that the opposite of last is "first". But doesn't it make at least as much sense to say the opposite of last is "not last"? From a programing/math standpoint, it seems like a strictly better, less arbitrary definition.

Ultimate? :)

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