"Penultimate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though very much more wisely than any of his contemporaries. Nor do the other "Songs of variable verse," which follow, and in some editions are mixed up with the sonnets, display less extraordinary power. The first song, with its refrain in the penultimate ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... that 'nobler,' pronounced as 'nobiler'—[Symbol (metrical): U-shape below the line]—, was the poet's word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of 'memory.' ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... as the laws of syntax are involved. It is necessary only to speak of objects as possessing and wanting vitality, to communicate to them the property named, whether it in reality possesses it in nature or not. For this purpose words which lack it in their penultimate syllables, take the consonant n to make their plurals for inanimates, and g for animates. By this simple method, the whole inanimate creation—woods, trees, rocks, clouds, waters, &c.—is clothed at will with life, or the opposite class of objects are shorn of it, which enables the speaker, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... now entering upon the penultimate period of his enormous career. He who had once been the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories, had at length emerged, after a lifetime of transmutations, as the champion of militant democracy. He was at the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... says the man with the nose, "is indisposed toward foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the penultimate syllable." ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... BERTON) with which to finish the piece, when the Prefect should have been killed either by Issachar or by Miriam (SARDOU would have made Issachar's daughter the heroine—the SARA BERNHARDT of the piece) then, in the penultimate Act, anything tragic, or otherwise, might picturesquely and appropriately have happened to the classic Girton girl, Hypatia, and Master Phil 'Ammon, the good young Monk so inclined to go wrong, to the great contentment of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... 'im. Now as you know, 'e shuts 'isself up and never opens the door to a soul; only you don't know why and we does. The only one as can ever get at 'im is 'is mother. Well, it's a confounded funny coincidence,' he said, accenting the penultimate, 'it's a very unusual piece of good ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... anybody belonging to him heard of the boy's escapade at the meeting, for upon that subject Job Legg felt it wisest to be silent. And when the penultimate meeting passed, the spirit of it was such that those best able to judge again felt very sanguine for Ironsyde. He had created a good impression and won a wide measure of support. He had worked hard, traversed all the ground and left the people under no shadow of doubt as to his opinions. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Palace and its inmates; and departed to his own country, from which he had lately received some unsatisfactory intelligence. The Emperor endeavoured to engage his influence to bring about a marriage which he desired to contract with a daughter of the penultimate Emperor, Muhammad Shah: but the Abdali, on his attention being drawn to the young lady, resolved upon espousing her himself. He at the same time married his son Timur Shah to the daughter of the heir apparent, and, having left that son in charge of the Panjab, retired with the ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... consult your tutors. Is, we call short, as Par{i}s, trist{i}s, Save all such words as mensIs, istIs. Plurals oblique that end in is, Adding thereto for quibus quIs. The is in SamnIs long by right is Because its genitive's SamnItis, Where you observe a lengthened state Of syllable penultimate. The same to all such words applies, And Is contracted, meaning eis, Long too,— and pray remember this Are monosyllables in is. Save {i}s the nominative pronoun, And qu{i}s, and b{i}s, which last is no noun. When verbs by is ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... fortnight, from 8 p.m. till 10 p.m., Janie tasted the penultimate triumph of womanhood. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... partakes in a proportionate measure of the powers, properties, and relations of its archeus: accordingly, the antagonist or harmonizing contrast of olive is a deep orange. Like blue, olive is a retiring colour, the most so of all the colours, being the penultimate of the scale, or nearest of all in relation to black, and last, theoretically, of the regular distinctions of colours. Hence its importance in nature and painting is almost as great as that of black; it divides the office of clothing the face of creation with ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... The penultimate week in August went on—wearily, tamely, and monotonously. It was, perhaps, the presence of the Speaker—it was, perhaps, the painful recollection of the scene of violence on a previous occasion—it was, perhaps, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... that the Greeks then pronounced the penultimate vowel according to the acute accenta; not as we slur it over. In old Hebrew we have the transliteration of four Greek words; in the languages of Hindostan many scores including names of places; and in Latin and Arabic as many hundreds. By a scholar-like comparison of these remains we should ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... admitted on all hands. It refers to the nature, or origin, or constitution of the fact. Is the perception of matter simple and indivisible, or is it composite and divisible? Is it the ultimate, or is it only the penultimate, datum of cognition? Is it a relation constituted by the concurrence of a mental or subjective, and a material or objective element,—or do we impose upon ourselves in regarding it as such? Is it a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... intelligent enough to have known that the pang she had felt would have been left unexplained. No, it was more fundamental than that. All the dress had accomplished was to set an acute accent over a development which, though already at its penultimate stage, had so far escaped the notice of Cleopatra and her mother. The picture had been present the day before, but it had not been quite perfectly focussed. The new frock had focussed ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... came to devastate the enchanting loveliness of the templed Roman garden which was Switzerland for three idyllic centuries, they stopped at last at the penultimate peaks of the Occidental Alps, at a certain region called aux fenils (ad fines), where a glacial stream rushes across the narrow valley of the Griesbach, among the southern mountains of the Bernese Oberland. Thus ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... not a quantitative symbol. The rules for its position are briefly as follows. No words but monosyllables or contracted forms have the accent on the last; dissyllables are therefore always accented on the first, and polysyllables on the first or second, according as the penultimate is short or long, Lucius, cecidi. At the same time, old Latin was burdened with a vast number of suffixes with a long final vowel. The result of the non-accentuation of the last syllable was a continual tendency to slur over and so shorten these suffixes. And this tendency was ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... have known me then," returned Lady Sellingworth, with the slightest possible stress on the penultimate word. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... reality of which its future force depended; and the men who embodied this spirit had no mind to relax their hold on its administration. After the death of Pius V. they had to deal with a Pope who resembled his penultimate predecessor, Pius IV., more than the last Pontiff. Ugo Buoncompagno, the scion of a bourgeois family settled in Bologna, began his career as a jurist. He took orders in middle life, was promoted to the Cardinalate, and attained the supreme honor of the Holy See in 1572. The man responded ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... specific in the Catholic religion is immortalization and not justification, in the Protestant sense. Rather is this latter ethical. It was from Kant, in spite of what orthodox Protestants may think of him, that Protestantism derived its penultimate conclusions—namely, that religion rests upon morality, and not morality upon ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... of that celebrated warehouse—the penultimate bankrupt—had followed the beaten road of puffing, and announced his goods as the cheapest ever manufactured. According to himself, his handbills, and his advertisements, everything contained in that shop was so very much under prime cost, that the more he sold the sooner ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... had, you see, wasted less breath. When he saw Hugh gasping in the penultimate throes of death, he mustered sufficient strength to clutch the bottle, and even to crawl over to his friend's side. Hugh saw him coming and shut his teeth. Arthur was too feeble to prize them open with his hands, but he had no difficulty in knocking out a couple with the butt end of the bottle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... and those which are similar, to cluster together ("segregation"); and this subdivision and dissipation of forces, so long as there are any forces unbalanced by opposite forces, must end at last in rest; the penultimate stage of this process "in which the extremest multiformity and most complex moving equilibrium are established," being the highest conceivable state. The various derivative laws of phenomenal changes are thus deducible ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... lost all sense of exactness," said Mrs. Gradinger, "for the lines you have just read would not pass muster as classic. In the penultimate line there are two syllables in excess of the true Alexandrine metre, and the last line seems too long by one. Neither Racine nor Voltaire would have taken such liberties with prosody. I remember a speech in Phaedre of more than a hundred lines which is an admirable ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... Mr. Hodshon in the bosom of his family. He was dandling a new baby in the air and trying not to step on the penultimate child, who was treating one of his legs as a tree. When the telephone rang he tossed the latest edition to its mother and hobbled to the table, trying to tear loose the clinger, for it does not sound well to hear a child gurgling at a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... relativity in morality, and declares all morality to be a mere means to power. Needless to say that verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Greeks, the Persians, the Jews, and the Germans respectively. In the penultimate verse he makes known his discovery concerning the root of modern Nihilism and indifference,—i.e., that modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals (see ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... rates on him and his red-herrings to boil right soup for the Devil's declared Elect! Never in my travels, in any age or clime, had I fallen in with such Visiting Magistrates before. Reserved they, I should suppose, for these ultimate or penultimate ages of the world, rich in all prodigies, political, spiritual,—ages surely with such a length of ears as ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... informing him that sailors have long made use of a compound which actually goes by the name of geograffy, which is only a trifling corruption of the name of the science, arising from their laying the accent on the penultimate. I will now give his lordship the receipt, which is ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... one suppose it possible to go back to the practice of the seventeenth century, when all Irish Bills were settled in the English Privy Council, and could not be altered in a Dublin Parliament? Orators declaim about our lost legislature, but they take good care not to say what it was. In the penultimate decade of the eighteenth century the trammels were taken off, and a Union was soon found necessary. During the short interval of Independence there were two French invasions and a bloody rebellion. Protestant ascendency, though ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... that?—but of his confidence, of his spirits and, what was more to the point, of his system. The whole occasion on which the first symptom flared out is before me as I write. I had met them both at dinner: they were diners who had reached the penultimate stage—the stage which in theory is a rigid selection and in practice a wan submission. It was late in the season and stronger spirits than theirs were broken; the night was close and the air of the banquet such ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... of the penultimate act that an attendant brought round Miss Cunyngham and her mother—the latter a handsome and distinguished-looking elderly lady, with white hair done up a la Marie Antoinette—behind the scenes; and Nina, hanging some ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... strongly-marked case; but its features, although unusually prominent, are like those of the general run of the considerations by which evolution is supposed to exclude design. Those of the penultimate citation and its context are all of the same stamp. The differences which begin as variations are said to be spontaneous—a metaphorical word of wide meanings—are inferred to be casual (whereas we only know them to be occult), or to be originated by surrounding agencies (which is ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the accent on the first syllable, and there has been much discussion about the origin of the name. Some say that it meant horses from Barbary, but then it should be pronounced Barberi, accented on the penultimate. Others think it stood for Barbari—barbarian, that is, unridden. The Romans never misplace an accent, and rarely mistake the proper quantity of a syllable long or short. For my own part, though no scholar has as yet suggested it, I believe that the common people, always fond of easy ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... escapes through the prehensile antennae; and it thus continues to do throughout life in most or all of the species of Lepas, Conchoderma, Dichelaspis and Ibla. In the first two of these genera, the cement escapes from the borders of the lower side of the disc or penultimate segment of the antennae, and can be there seen radiating out like spokes, which at their ends divide into finer and finer branches, till a uniform sheet of cement is formed, fastening the antennae and the adjoining part of the peduncle down to the ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... the last day's sitting made it a little heavier than when I left it unfinished. Was it that the final glazing was somewhat too thick? I only mention this as a very slight defect, which I should not have observed had I not seen its penultimate state, and were I not a crotchetty stickler for lightness and ease. But I hope and trust you will now do all your future sketches in oil in the same way in which this is done: the long brush, the wholesome distance between canvas, painter, and sitter, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Polyzoa, both serving as pincers, it may be worth while to show that with the former a long series of serviceable gradations still exists. In the first and simplest stage, the terminal segment of a limb shuts down either on the square summit of the broad penultimate segment, or against one whole side, and is thus enabled to catch hold of an object, but the limb still serves as an organ of locomotion. We next find one corner of the broad penultimate segment slightly ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... is requisite to know that rhyme may be considered in a double sense, that is to say, in a wide and in a narrow sense. In the narrow sense, it is understood as that concordance which in the last and in the penultimate syllable it is usual to make. In the wide sense, it is understood for all that language which, with numbers and regulated time, falls into rhymed consonance; and thus it is desired that it should be taken and understood in this Proem. ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... ten minutes to play, the Convalescents, who had shown great form, required only twelve runs to win the match. Kippy and Gunner Toady shared the batting. A pretty glance to leg for two by the Gunner was all that could be taken out of the penultimate over, and Kippy at the pergola end faced Mark Styles, the postman, to take the first ball of the last over. Two singles were run, and then Kippy placed one nicely into the herbaceous border for four. The next one nearly got him, and then, with the seven o'clock delivery, as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... penultimate point of importance, which may be held to affect the inclusion or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster—I mean the question of future constitutional amendment. Here the colonial analogies are a little complicated. Since the Australian Colonies Act of 1850, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... appeared of late, like a penultimate branching-out of the old classical trunk, or, better still, like one of those excrescences, those polypi, which decrepitude develops, and which are a sign of decomposition much more than a proof of life—there has appeared a strange school of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... that when the last act comes, the audience thinks not of pistols, but of murder and suicide. A striking illustration of the same dramaturgic principle was shown in Mrs. Fiske's admirable performance of this play. The climax of the piece comes at the end of the penultimate act, when Hedda casts into the fire the manuscript of the book into which Eilert has put the great work of his life. The stove stands ready at the left of the stage; but when the culminating moment comes, the spectators must be made to forget ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... active life, he turned for the Mediterranean. Had he held on Southwards down the African coast it is doubtful whether in face of the interference of England, Russia, France, Denmark and Spain, he could have made piracy pay; but in turning for the Mediterranean he took what we may call the penultimate step of his life which meant for him settling down. There were three great courses of action invented by Shard in his youth, upon which he pondered by day and brooded by night, consolations in all his ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... wishful to deny or admit the Andromeda's shortcomings—even the ship herself might have protested against the horror of a long "e" in the penultimate syllable of her name—the other man's rapid proffer of a light stopped him. He puffed away in silence; there was an awkward pause; for once in his career, Verity regretted his cultivated trick of covering up a significant phrase by quickly ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... replied to the penultimate sentence: "It would not surprise me, indeed, to hear of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the cold interstellar ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... is employed at the penultimate pause in order to promote variety, since the voice generally falls at the ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Our penultimate performance was over, and I was in the midst of my vagaries again, when I saw Berry. Unanxious to tempt Providence, I retired precipitately to the shelter of the booth. My companion was sitting disconsolately upon the box on which she stood to work ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... he, taking the proffered hand of the old lady and then bowing slightly. He pronounced her name Schenectady, with a strong accent on the penultimate syllable. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... just as a stone thrown into the water produces many concentric circles, be it known that he, Dr. Paley, in what he says of utility, contemplates only the final result, the very outermost circle; inasmuch as he acknowledges a possibility that the first, second, third, including the penultimate circle, may all happen to clash with utility; but then, says he, the outermost circle of all will never fail to coincide with the absolute maximum of utility. Hence, in the first place, it appears ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... bedroom, she had done so with the best intentions, under the strictest chaperonage ... usually that of her dear, devoted old nurse, God bless her!... whose presence in the bedroom had been hidden, until the middle of the penultimate chapter, from the heroine's friends and relatives. The hero, of course, poor, manly, broken giant, had been ill, suffering from a fever, and in his delirium had called for her, discontent until she had put her cool firm hand upon his hot brow, and the doctor had said that if she would ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... indecisive ending, where the curtain falls, as the saying goes, on a note of interrogation. An unemphatic ending, as I understand it, is a deliberate anticlimax, an idyllic, or elegiac, or philosophic last act, following upon a penultimate act of very much higher tension. The disposition to condemn such an ending off-hand is what I am here pleading against. It is sometimes assumed that the playwright ought always to make his action conclude within five minutes of its culmination; but for such a hard-and-fast ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... immortal robes. It was Miss Pinnegar who saw the travellers and ordered the unions and calicoes and grey flannel. James hovered round and said the last word, of course. But what was his last word but an echo of Miss Pinnegar's penultimate! He was not interested in unions ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... James Carstairs, explorer, gentleman and rolling stone, limped into the picture, and the story of The Lost Valley entered upon its penultimate phase. ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... perpetually sing their spring song of Hosannah with three melodies, which sound in the three orders of joy wherewith it is threefold. In this hierarchy are the three Divinities, first Dominations, and then the Virtues; the third order is of Powers. Then, in the two penultimate dances, the Principalities and Archangels circle; the last is wholly of Angelic sports. These orders are all upward gazing, and downward prevail, so that toward God they all are drawn, and they all draw. And Dionysius[2] with ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... whole of the profits that might arise from the use of a water-raising engine, described in the last article in the 'Century' of Inventions. The 'Century' itself had been presented to the king and commons some months previously. This invention, coupled with its penultimate and antepenultimate ninety-ninth and ninety-eighth inventions, may indeed be justly considered as the wonder of the 'Century,' since, when united with the sixty-eighth, they appear, in Partington's opinion, to suggest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... persistency of their King, stood firmly by the original form of the reformation decree, and finally obtained its restoration to a very considerable extent. Thus the greater portion of the decree was at last passed in the penultimate session of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... as a derived shadow is nearer to its penultimate extremities the deeper it will appear, g z beyond the intersection faces only the part of the shadow [marked] y z; this by intersection takes the shadow from m n but by direct line it takes the shadow a m hence it is twice as deep as g z. Y x, by intersection takes ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... mystery—these the true PLEASURES of SULKINESS. We profess no more of this grand secret than what ourself experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last week, sulking in our study. We had proceeded to the penultimate point, at which the true adept seldom stops, where the consideration of benefit forgot is about to merge in the meditation of general injustice—when a knock at the door was followed by the entrance ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... the Haussa language signifies something more than finished. A man might say, "I've finished eating," for example, and yet in a few hours he will be again satisfying his hunger, but "maquisha" signifies finished in the penultimate sense—the final extermination of ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... end of Schubert's "Erlking" would have been absolutely false if the penultimate note had ascended to the tonic instead of descending a fifth. "The child ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... of the indeterminate equation ax by c may be effected by means of continued fractions. If we suppose a/b to be converted into a continued fraction and p/q to be the penultimate convergent, we have aq - bp 1 or -1, according as the number of convergents is even or odd, which we can take them to be as we please. If we take aq-bp 1 we have a general solution in integers of ax by c, viz. x cq - bt, y at - cp; if we take aq - bp -1, we have x ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... palpable, panacea, panegyric, panorama, paradoxical, paramount, parasite, parochial, paroxysm, parsimonious, parturition, patois, patriarchal, patrician, patrimony, peccadillo, pecuniary, pedantic, pellucid, pendulous, penultimate, penurious, peregrination, perfunctory, peripatetic, periphery, persiflage, perspicacious, perspicuity, pertinacious, pharmaceutic, phenomenal, phlegmatic, phraseology, pictorial, piquant, pique, plagiarize, platitudinous, platonic, plebeian, plenipotentiary, plethora, pneumatic, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... significant, knowing as I did that it must have been lying where I found it, in a drawer of Freydon's work-table, while he wrote, immediately before his last illness, the final sections of this work, including its penultimate chapter; including, ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... generation was worse, it seems, than the penultimate, as the present is worst than the last. We, however, of the present, bad as we may be, shall be kept in countenance by the coming generation, which will prove much worse than ourselves. On the same ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the barge of Cleopatra upon Cydnus; but the shore-crowd, under whose eyes it had been waiting for close upon twenty minutes, voted it to be a very creditable turn out; and Cai, watch in hand, was at least as impatient as Mark Antony. Off the Committee Ship, a cable's length up the river, the penultimate race (ran-dan pulling-boats) was finishing amid banging of guns and bursts of music from the "Troy Town Band," saluting the winner with "See the Conquering Hero Comes," the second boat with strains consecrated to ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... where dropped by a bird or a beast, and exhausting the soil of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and potash, from the centre continuously outwards; whilst immediately within the enlarging ring there is constantly a band of coarse rank grass fed by the manure of the penultimate dead spawn. The innermost starved ground remains poor and barren. In this duplicate way the rings grow larger ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... The penultimate message describes, with occasionally elaborate detail, the encounter between Cavor and the Grand Lunar, who is the ruler or master of the moon. Cavor seems to have sent most of it without interference, but to have been interrupted in the concluding portion. The second came after ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Words on Religion, under the title of Antepenultimate Words on Religion. As Mr. Pitts observes in his arresting Preface, "Finality, in a time of upheaval, is a relative term, and I hope, at intervals of six months or so, to publish my penultimate, quasi-ultimate and paulo-post-ultimate views on the vital beliefs which underlie the fantastic superstructure of dogmatic theology." The new work will be illustrated with three portraits of the author by Mr. Marcellus ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... no need to say more of Mr. Morris's "Odysseus." Close to the letter of the Greek he usually keeps, but where are the surge and thunder of Homer? Apparently we must accent the penultimate in "Amphinomus" if the line is to scan. I select a passage of ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... work. It was largely guesswork, following those intricate alien connections, but Rynason had seen this part of such machines before. He found the penultimate point at which the impulses from the brain were translated into sound and broadcast through the speaker. He disconnected this, his torn fingers working awkwardly ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... most charming story!!" gurgled the Baron, as, with sobs in his inner voice, talking to himself, he finished the penultimate chapter of Dolly. "Now, Mrs. BURNETT, if you dare to kill your heroine, I swear I'll never forgive you, and never read another of your fatally-fascinating books." The Baron trembled as he commenced the last chapter of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... monkey of me!" retorted Mr. Button fiercely. "Never you mind how funny you look. Put them on—or I'll—or I'll spank you." He swallowed uneasily at the penultimate word, feeling nevertheless that it was the ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... strange and undescribed genera. One, which in some respects is allied to the Notopods (or those crabs which have their posterior legs placed almost on their backs, for the purpose of adhering to the under side of rocks), is very remarkable from the structure of its hind pair of legs. The penultimate joint, instead of terminating in a simple claw, ends in three bristle-like appendages of dissimilar lengths — the longest equalling that of the entire leg. These claws are very thin, and are serrated with the finest teeth, directed backwards: ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... has passed away from the ancient dynasty. If the penultimate monarch could rise from his peaceful grave, his place would know him no more. If he traveled through all his thirty miles of seaboard, the Scotch laborers would doff their hats more respectfully to the steward of the "Law Life" than to the humane old homicide. The royal writ, which he defied ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... coat-collar. Aristide, sufficiently protected by his goat's hide, talked like a shepherd on a May morning. Why he took for granted my interest in his unromantic, not to say sordid, courtship I knew not; but he gave me the whole history of it from its modest beginnings to its now penultimate stage. From what I could make out—for the mistral whirled many of his words away over unheeding Provence—he had entered the Cafe de l'Univers one evening, a human derelict battered by buffeting ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... as the penultimate entree was reached, had turned naturally on the affair of the theatre and the constitutionally sworn rector. In the first fervor of royalty, during the year 1816, those who later were called Jesuits were all for the expulsion of the Abbe Francois from his parish. Du ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... him, he could not be the only nasal nightingale in the three kingdoms. While I thus argued the matter, silently, yet suspiciously, a wandering gleam of day, streaming in at the coach windows, faintly lit up a nose the penultimate peculiarities of which gave a very ominous turn to my reflections. In due time this light became more vivid; and beneath its encouraging influence, first, a pair of eyes—then two sallow, juiceless cheeks, then an upper lip, then a projecting chin; and lastly, the entire figure of the Mysterious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... in reply to the penultimate paragraph of your Excellency's note, I have the honor to state that it is not intended to interfere with neutral vessels carrying enemy cargo of non-contraband nature outside European waters, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... distal than inner, small, and elliptical; subarticular tubercles round; length of digits from shortest to longest 1-2-5-3-4; third and fifth toes webbed to base of disc; fourth toe webbed to base of penultimate phalanx; discs smaller on toes than on fingers. Anal opening directed posteriorly at upper level of thighs; no anal flap; pair of large tubercles below anal opening and a slightly smaller pair farther below. ...
— Descriptions of Two Species of Frogs, Genus Ptychohyla - Studies of American Hylid Frogs, V • William E. Duellman
... and probably somewhat later the old rule still held good of quadrisyllables with the scansion of m[)u]l[)i][)e]r[)i]s or m[)u]l[)i][)e]r[e]s, but in other words had given way to the later Quintilian rule, that all words with a long unit as penultimate had the stress on the vowel in that unit, while words of more than two syllables with a short penultimate had the stress on the antepenultimate. I say 'unit' because here, as in scansion, what counts is not the syllable, but the vowel plus all the consonants that ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... so strongly as it is expressed in the Origin, Ed. i. p. 299,—as perhaps "the most obvious and gravest objection that can be urged against my theory." But in a rough summary written on the back of the penultimate page of the MS. he refers to the geological evidence:—"Evidence, as far as it does go, is favourable, exceedingly incomplete,—greatest difficulty on this theory. I am convinced not insuperable." Buckland's ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... only one feels like writing, he should pour forth his heart to his friend, although that friend remain as silent as the grave. It would be as absurd to say that either party "owes the letter," as to charge him who had the penultimate word in a dialogue with the duty of making the first remark the next time he encounters her who had the last word. When the topic of immediate interest has been disposed of, a correspondence is over. It matters as little who contributed the larger proportion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... in the Monumenta Historica Britannica, pp. 502 and 505. Nouns, and names ending thus in "r," preceded by a vowel, were often written without the penultimate vowel, particularly in the Scandinavian branches of the Teutonic language; as Baldr for Balder and Baldur; Folkvangr for Folkvangar; Surtr for Surtur and Surtar, etc. (See the Glossary to the prose Edda in Bohn's edition of Mallet's Northern Antiquities, ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... with the high boughs swinging in the wind above the sun-brightened mists, and the golden-coloured spray of the cataract amid the broken rocks, whereover the wild hawks fly to and fro, there is at least a suggestion, an outline, of the truly magnificent burst of morning music in the poet's penultimate volume, beginning— ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Tetrastichs are more musically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes all rhyming, but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank. Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alphabetic Rhyme—a strange succession ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... think it would be extremely difficult to distinguish between true and new spreading of a species, and a rotation of crop. With respect to your idea of plants travelling west, I was much struck by a remark of yours in the penultimate "Linnean Journal" on the spreading of plants from America near Behring Straits. Do you not consider so many more seeds and plants being taken from Europe to America, than in a reverse direction, would go some way ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... much the larger and the more interesting part of the work. And, in any case, the title is open to all Asiatic expeditions whatsoever; to the Trojan that just crossed the water, to the Macedonian that went beyond the Indus. The word Anabasis must have its accent on the syllable ab, not on the penultimate ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and leaps four centuries: it is young and perpetual. It thrills with something the failing middle ages had forgotten: it reaches what they never reached, a climax, for one cannot put too vividly the flash of the penultimate line, "I am granted a vision when I think ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... end, and was thankful to see that the reply was from Rachel herself. But the penultimate clause introduced a complication. It must have some meaning. It would scarcely be a wholly irrelevant expression of dislike. Langholm, at all events, read a warning in the words—a warning to himself not to call on Mr. Crofts as a friend of ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... conveyed not only by the obvious meaning of the words, but through the long-drawn sound of 'Tendebantque,' through the time occupied by the five syllables and therefore by the idea of 'ulterioris,' and through the identity of the long sound 'or' in the penultimate syllables of 'ulterioris amore'—all this, and much more, apprehended not in this analytical fashion, nor as added to the beauty of mere sound and to the obvious meaning, but in unity with them and so as expressive of the ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... "interchangeable part," with a fixed number, in a rule-bound organism. The real thing to aim at is liberation of the inner interests. Give man possession of a soul, and he will work out his own happiness under any set of conditions. Accordingly, when, in the penultimate year of his life, he proposed his night-school to a meeting of young East-Side workingmen in New York, he told them that he had no sympathy whatever with the griefs of "labor," that outward circumstances meant nothing in his eyes; that through their individual wills and intellects they could share, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... touch of malice in her words, or rather in the pause between the penultimate word and the last. Ernest detected its presence, and knew that her love for Reginald was dead. Stiff and cold it lay in her heart's chamber—beside how many others?—all emboxed ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... obvious meaning of the words, but through the long-drawn sound of "tendebantque," through the time occupied by the five syllables and therefore by the idea of "ulterioris," and through the identity of the long sound "or" in the penultimate syllables of "ulterioris amore"—all this, and much more, apprehended not in this analytical fashion, nor as added to the beauty of mere sound and to the obvious meaning, but in unity with them and so as expressive of the poetic meaning of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... After the seventeenth revolution the internode had grown from 1.75 to 6 inches in length, and carried an internode 1.875 inch long, which was just perceptibly moving; and this carried a very minute ultimate internode. After the twenty-first revolution, the penultimate internode was 2.5 inches long, and probably revolved in a period of about three hours. At the twenty-seventh revolution the lower and still moving internode was 8.375, the penultimate 3.5, and the ultimate 2.5 inches in ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... Railway Side Pocket Vocabularies Pathos The Point of Honour Composure Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes James Russell Lowell Domus Angusta Rejection The Lesson of Landscape Mr. Coventry Patmore's Odes Innocence and Experience Penultimate Caricature ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... and six thousand pounds to rescue and to save the most beautiful, the most unfortunate country in the world from further disappointment? Only six thousand pounds now required for the great ultimate, or penultimate, or antepenultimate effort. Another twopence and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... of a gay and expensive quality. There was a fine billiard-room on the ground floor with three comfortable sofas and a rotating bookcase containing an excellent collection of the English and American humorists from THREE MEN IN A BOAT to the penultimate Mark Twain. There was also a conservatory opening out of the dining-room, to which the gardener brought potted flowers ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... pure iota with a penultimate of alpha the same is done, as [Greek omitted], "horn," [Greek omitted], "old age," [Greek omitted], "ray." And this, too, is Attic, where it is said [Greek omitted], "let them be," and [Greek omitted], "let them follow," for [Greek omitted] ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... because he finds himself at an end, but in all the freshness of volition. His work now structurally complete, with all the accumulating effect of secondary shades of meaning, he finishes the whole up to the just proportion of that ante-penultimate conclusion, and all becomes expressive. The house he has built is rather a body he has informed. And so it happens, to its greater credit, that the better interest even of a narrative to be recounted, a story to ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... remark is Xenophon-Hellenic, but less edifying; fortunately it is only the penultimate, for there is the final {khairete} [good-bye] and message to his wife. Why was she not present? I suppose she was at home ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... ever to have read) of the Free Trade position in general and the case against a Customs Union in particular; but I have recently elsewhere stated my views on those subjects at length. Regarding the penultimate article, I should like to say a word in conclusion. That article attacks me by a side wind. It does not contest the facts contained in my book; on the contrary, it leads off with an airy dismissal of "Mr. Williams and his fanciful forebodings," and it shows, ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... steal off to catch trains to Brighton and other suburbs, and leave the theatre before the ending of a play. The result threatens to be curious. The dramatists will be induced to make their big effort in the penultimate act, leaving nothing for the last but some tranquil rounding off which you may miss without serious loss. Instead of the notice, often, alas! untrue: "The audience is requested to be seated punctually at eight o'clock, since the interest in the play begins at the rise of the curtain," ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... I see" is equivalent to, "Do I live," because death threatened, as it were, to enter through the eyes. (Compare the expression, "Mine eyes have seen," in Is. vi.) [Hebrew: rai] is the pausal form for [Hebrew: rai]; see Job xxxiii. 21, where, however, the accent is on the penultimate. Then follows ver. 14: They called the well, "Well of the living sight;" i.e., where a person had a sight of God, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... handled this hypothesis of Mr. Wright's, brings several arguments against it, which, taken together, seem to me quite conclusive. To begin with, several children were born to Defoe during this period. He paid much attention to their education, and in 1713, the penultimate year of this supposed silence, we find his sons helping him in his work. Again, in 1703 Mrs. Defoe was interceding for her husband's release from Newgate. Let me add that it was an age in which personalities ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... (Fig. 172, c). This spring is in part homologous with the ovipositor of the higher insects, which originally consists of three pairs of tubercles, each pair arising apparently from the seventh, eighth, and ninth (the latter the penultimate) segments of the abdomen in the Hymenoptera. The spring of the Podura seems to be the homologue of the third pair of these tubercles, and is inserted on the penultimate segment. This comparison I have been able to make from a study of the ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the last cat jumped over the one in front and over the one in front of that and so on until, having cleared the first cat, it leaped on to its stand where it began to lick itself placidly. Meanwhile, the penultimate cat had begun the same evolution, and then the ante-penultimate cat, until all the cats had cleared the front one and had taken their positions on their stands. The last cat, left alone, looked round, yawned in the face of the audience, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... to a religious building; they also regulated the order of the colours, each one of which was consecrated by tradition to one of those great heavenly bodies. We can easily understand how the silver white of the penultimate stage was chosen to symbolize the moon, while the glory of the gold upon the upper story recalled that ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot |
