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
Ultima comes from Latin
ultima (syllaba) "last (syllable)". Penult and antepenult are abbreviations for
paenultima and
antepaenultima. Penult has the prefix
paene "almost", and antepenult has the prefix
ante "before".
Classical languages
In
Latin and
Ancient Greek, only the three last syllables can be accented. In Latin, a word's stress is dependent on the
syllable weight or length of the penultimate syllable. In Ancient Greek, the place and the type of accent are dependent on the length of the vowel in the ultima.
See also
