Is it correct to say "the last word but three"?

Question

How can I refer to the bold word in the following text?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, ea usu erant laboramus, ut vocent consequuntur nec. Usu partem gloriatur ut, eam te quas legendos, est accumsan accusamus argumentum te.

Is it correct to say "the last word but three"? I am looking for a general and commonly-used-by-people term.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, ea usu erant laboramus, ut vocent consequuntur nec. Usu partem gloriatur ut, eam te quas legendos, est accumsan accusamus argumentum te.

Sure. If you can say "the last but one" to mean the penultimate word—which you can—I suppose the rest is just arithmetic. — Robusto, Oct 06 '15 at 18:35
I'd call it the "fourth to the last word", or "the fourth word from the end" — Kristina Lopez, Oct 06 '15 at 18:40
@bib: I am not sure why you have a hyphen in preantepenultimate — Henry, Oct 06 '15 at 20:00
@Henry Who new. I thought I was neologizing. Now I have to answer. How do I share credit with you? — bib, Oct 06 '15 at 20:33

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 06 '15 at 20:32

4

The term is preantepenultimate

That precedes or stands immediately before the antepenult; the last but three.

Oxford Dictionaries Online

Lest there be any confusion about what the above definition means, Wiktionary defines it as

Three before the end; fourth to last.

(Thanks to @Henry who informed me that I was not just making this up.)

answered Oct 06 '15 at 20:32

bib

72,782

You’re channelling me: I just mentioned preäntepenultimate yesterday when describing the stress in difficulty, which is stressed preäntepenultimately. – tchrist Oct 07 '15 at 03:03
1

@tchrist, interestingly, there is no last but five or six. There's (pro/supra)preantepenultimate (not found in the OED2, from my recollection) to mean "last but four; fifth from the last"; I've seen a suggestion of forepropreantepenultimate for "last but five; sixth from the last". I suppose supraforepropreantepenultimate, meaning "last but six; seventh from the last", could a coinage for it. I wonder if there are enough unique prefixes to get to "last but ten; eleventh from the last". – Jasper Locke Oct 07 '15 at 06:22
Is the usage of "preantepenultimate" common and understandable to all people? – B Faley Oct 07 '15 at 17:43
It might be familiar to some language geeks, would be understood by most such geeks. Others (regular human beings), not so much. – bib Oct 07 '15 at 17:46

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 07 '15 at 02:38

0

Syntactically, it is correct.

Semantically, it is needlessly confusing. Unlike "last but one", it is not at all common. It should be avoided for that reason.

answered Oct 07 '15 at 02:38

keshlam

4,653

What should be used instead? – B Faley Oct 07 '15 at 09:39
I'd say "fourth from the last", which is close to what @kristinalopez suggested – keshlam Oct 07 '15 at 14:41

Is it correct to say "the last word but three"?

2 Answers2