Antepenultimatum
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A statement of terms or conditions made by one party to another, essentially a penultimatum, but even more tentative and more repeatedly abandoned in favour of subsequent ignominious compromises.
"THE RUSSIAN ULTIMATUM. We are constantly hearing of some fresh ultimatum being proposed by the Russian Government, so that what was considered a fortnight since the real ultimatum, must, now that another has been offered, be called the penultimatum; and next week, when a third one will probably have been suggested, we shall find that the original ultimatum was, in fact, only an antepenultimatum."
Example
More examples"THE RUSSIAN ULTIMATUM. We are constantly hearing of some fresh ultimatum being proposed by the Russian Government, so that what was considered a fortnight since the real ultimatum, must, now that another has been offered, be called the penultimatum; and next week, when a third one will probably have been suggested, we shall find that the original ultimatum was, in fact, only an antepenultimatum."
Etymology
From ante- + penultimatum.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.