Word.ws English Dictionary

forelast

forelast adjective: next to last, second to last.

Adjective

forelast (not comparable)

  1. (nonstandard, possibly, rare) Next to last, second to last.
    • Certain disyllables, being both Nouns and Verbs, are distinguished by the Accent: the Verb having it in the last, and the Noun in the fore-last[…]1633, Charles Butler, The English Grammar, Oxford, page 57, spelling modernized
    • The only difference between the 12 song books selected, which is at all worth mentioning, is that Aiken, Gantvoort, Jepson, Ripley, Zeiner have in the forelast bar—[sheet music] whereas[…]1909, Oscar Sonneck, compiler, Report on the "Star-Spangled Banner", "Hail Columbia", "America", "Yankee Doodle", Washington: Government Printing Office, page 73
    Synonyms:
    penultimate

Examples of forelast in a sentence

  • The second statement is a special case of the forelast, and the forelast one follows from the last, whose proof is obvious[…]2012 [1992], Konrad Jacobs, Discrete Stochastics, Springer Basel AG, →ISBN, page 36:
  • when the blight came on the crop the summer forelast he would not help us.2003 [2002], Joseph O'Connor, Star of the Sea, Orlando: Harcourt, →ISBN, page 270:

Synonyms of forelast

Forms of forelast

alternative formfore-last

Origin of forelast

From fore- + last. In some instances of more recent use, perhaps also a calque of German vorletzte or Dutch voorlaatst.

Questions about forelast

What does forelast mean?
Forelast means next to last, second to last.
How do you use forelast in a sentence?
The second statement is a special case of the forelast, and the forelast one follows from the last, whose proof is obvious[…]
What part of speech is forelast?
Forelast is an adjective.

Words near forelast in the dictionary

  1. forelain
  2. foreland
  3. forelands
  4. forelandward
  5. forelash
  6. forelast
  7. forelay
  8. forelaying
  9. forelays
  10. forelead
  11. foreleader

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: forelast (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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