0

Let us say there is a statement which says that a person joins a party two days earlier than me. In these type of cases I have too much confusion about when the person will join. Is the difference in days between the two persons equal to 1 or is it 2? A similar variation to the statement is there are two boxes above a blue box. Then is that particular box third or second from the blue box?

Rajorshi Koyal
  • 109
  • If they joined 0 days earlier, it’d have to be the same day. Now work backwards. – Jim Oct 08 '21 at 14:47
  • I think I am in the minority who would use "first from last" to mean what is the definition of "second from last", i.e., the next to last item. For me the "second from/to last" is the one after the "first from last". Welcome to my idiolect. (I see this has been discussed in other questions.) – DjinTonic Oct 08 '21 at 16:05
  • 'He joined two days earlier than I did' is usually rounded treating days as indivisible units when interpreted. It could even be that he joined at 23:59 on Monday and I joined at 00:01 on Wednesday, but we'd normally say 'two days earlier' rather than 1.00002315 days or 1 day earlier. // Also, last / next to last / second from last / .... – Edwin Ashworth Oct 08 '21 at 16:25
  • 1
    @EdwinAshworth I also say last / next to last / second from last but Wiktionary has "Penultimate, next to last, immediately preceding the end of a sequence or list." for second to/from last. Same for m-w – DjinTonic Oct 08 '21 at 16:45
  • A related topic: fencepost errors. – acvill Oct 08 '21 at 17:12

0 Answers0