Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...
of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the
ultima. For example, the main stress falls on the penult in such English words as ''banána'', and ''Mississíppi'', and just about all words ending in –ic such as músic, frántic, and phonétic. Occasionally, "penult" refers to the last word but one of a sentence.
The terms are often used in reference to languages like
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
and
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic pe ...
, where the position of the
pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...
or
stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
of a word only falls on one of the last three syllables, and sometimes in discussing
poetic meter
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
.
In certain languages, such as
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peopl ...
and
Polish, stress is always on the penult.
Chapter 14: Fixed Stress Locations
in the World Atlas of Language Structures
See also
* Acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...
** Oxytone
An oxytone (; from the grc, ὀξύτονος, ', 'sharp-sounding') is a word with the stress on the last syllable, such as the English words ''correct'' and ''reward''. (A paroxytone
Paroxytone ( el, παροξύτονος, ') is a lingui ...
** Paroxytone
Paroxytone ( el, παροξύτονος, ') is a linguistic term for a word with stress on the penultimate syllable, that is, the second last syllable, such as the English word ''potáto'', and just about all words ending in –ic such as mús ...
** Proparoxytone
In linguistics, a proparoxytone ( el, προπαροξύτονος, ) is a word with stress on the antepenultimate (third last) syllable, such as the English words "cinema" and "operational". Related terms are paroxytone (stress on the penultimate ...
* Ultima (linguistics)
In linguistics, the ultima is the last syllable of a word, the penult is the next-to-last syllable, and the antepenult is third-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.
Etymology
U ...
* Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as ...
References
Phonology
Greek grammar
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