Word.ws English Dictionary

penultima law

penultima law is the alternative spelling of paenultima law.

Meaning of paenultima law

Noun

paenultima law (singulare tantum)

  1. (singular, singular-only) The rule of Classical Latin pronunciation which states that a word receives antepenultimate stress if its penult is a short or metrically light syllable, but receives penultimate stress if its penult is a long or metrically heavy syllable.
    • He calls attention to the large number of words found over and over again with a metrical accent which does not follow the ‘paenultima law’, but falls on the last syllable…or even on the fourth syllable from the end.1892, The Journal of Philology, XX, page 138

Questions about penultima law

What is penultima law the alternative spelling of?
Penultima law is the alternative spelling of paenultima law.

Words near penultima law in the dictionary

  1. penuckle
  2. Penuel
  3. Penukonda
  4. penult
  5. penultima
  6. penultima law
  7. penultimas
  8. penultimata
  9. penultimate
  10. penultimately
  11. penultimates

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: penultima law (page history and authors); paenultima law (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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