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Alexander Berntsen posted on Fri, 13 Nov 2015 13:17:28 +0100 as excerpted: |
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> On 12/11/15 16:00, Michał Górny wrote: |
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>> their generation should be run as the lask task done by egencache, |
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>> followed only by timestamp update. |
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> Is "lask" supposed to be "last"? Also, "last except not last" is not |
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> very good English. The word you seem to be looking for is "penultimate". |
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> (Which would make the "only" redundant.) |
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FWIW, while "penultimate" is unarguably correct, it's also in some |
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regional dialects (US at least) rather rare and high-register, and is in |
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fact a newish (within the year, and I'm nearing 50) addition to my own |
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vocabulary. |
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The more common wording I'm far more familiar with, to the point of |
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defining penultimate in terms of it in "the dictionary in my head", is |
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"next-to-last". |
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[After checking...] Wictionary seems to agree, saying penultimate is |
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British, in US it's considered formal/literary/scholarly, what I termed |
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high register. It defines penultimate in terms of next to last (or more |
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archaic, last but one, tho in the US that's now seen as a Britishism too, |
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see usage notes) as well. (Meanwhile, I seriously can't picture /anyone/ |
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using "propreantepenultimate" except as a joke!) |
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |
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