antepenultimate / nudiustertian

[prettygoodword]

antepenultimate (an-tee-pi-NUHL-tuh-mit) - adj., pertaining to or located the second from the end.

nudiustertian (nyu-dee-uhs-TUHR-shee-an) - adj., pertaining to or occurring on the day before yesterday.


This was supposed to be what I posted Wednesday -- or rather, my nudiustertian post. Note that stress in antepenultimate is on the antepenultimate syllable, and that the pronunciation for nudiustertian is a guess on my part. Both are from Latin -- the former from ante-, before + paenultima, contraction of paene ultima, almost the end, the latter from nudius tertius, a contraction of nunc dies tertius est, now it is the third day (since then). There is, btw, an obsolete English-root synonym for nudiustertian: ereyesterday.

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Is there a sense of when "ereyesterday" was used to mean day before last in particular? If I came upon "ar gester dai" in a text, I'd infer something more at "previously." (Unrevised OED2 cites an antiquarian's wordlist, which merely means that some C18 person had an opinion. I shrug. But it's been a while since 1921.)

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

The example from the Cloverdale Bible on the wiktionary entry (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ereyesterday) certainly seems to mean specifically the day before yesterday, though I suppose it could also be read more generally as before yesterday.

---L.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

ah. Thanks.