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Steve Mossberg author page
1 puzzle by Steve Mossberg
with Jim Horne comments
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"Penultimate" is a great word, but as English continues to erode, I mean evolve, it's in danger of losing precision. It means "second to last" but (sloppy) people sometimes use it to mean the very last. That makes jokes like "post-penultimate" or clues like 20 Across lose all sense.
Flanders and Swann famously included the lyric, "Then there flashed through her mind what her mother had said, With her antepenultimate breath" in their cautionary song Have Some Madeira, M'Dear.