ultimate
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈʌl.tɪm.ət/
note: weak vowel merger
ipa: /ˈʌl.tɪm.ɪt/
rhymes: -ɪt
note: Indic
ipa: /ăl.ʈɪm.eʈ/
Forms: form: more ultimate
form: most ultimate
Etymology: * From Medieval Latin ultimātus (“furthest, last”), perfect passive participle of ultimō (“to come to an end”) (see -ate (1,2 and 3)), from ultimus (“last, final”) + -ō (verb-forming suffix). See ultra-.
* (ultimate frisbee): The sport was renamed to avoid the use of the Frisbee trademark.
Senses: examples: text: […] they [the sounds of an echo] next strike the ultimate secondary object, then the penultimate and antepenultimate; […]
ref: 1677, Robert Plot, “Of the Heavens and Air”, in The natural history of Oxford-shire: Being an Essay Toward the Natural History of England, page 15:
glosses: Final; last in a series.
glosses: Last in a word or other utterance.
raw_tags: of a syllable
examples: text: the ultimate pleasure
text: the ultimate disappointment
text: Not that we consider this as the most desirable channel in which these affections should be made to flow. The good that is done in this way, is by no means in proportion to the good that is intended. Injudicious charity has probably been productive of far more ultimate evil, than the coldest and most indiscriminating selfishness.
ref: 1813, Henry Ware, Noah Worcester, The Christian Disciple and Theological Review, Boston, Cummings and Hilliard, pages 227-228:
text: "But if Berkeley be clear in conveying his doctrine, the matter of the exposition will be found not the less to press upon the powers of the firmest intellect. There are diligent students of modern metaphysical literature, who are little disciplined for the difficulties of disquisition into which a thorough examination of his views would lead them. His characteristic system depends little on mere classification, little on the more obvious results of observation. It rests on a basis of intense self-contemplation, which, to be prosecuted to any purpose, must be prosecuted with extreme perseverance. It questions the conscious being on points the most ultimate in his nature, — points which, though they be but facts of consciousness, we hesitate not to say, there are many minds wholly unable to make the objects of reflection."
ref: 1839, Thomas Bartlett, Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of Joseph Butler, John W. Parker, page 264:
text: "From the foregoing observations we deduce the interesting fact that acetic acid, hitherto known only as a product of the oxidation of organic materials, can be built up by almost direct synthesis from its elements. Sulphide of carbon, chloride of carbon, and chlorine, are the agents which, along with water, accomplish the transformation of carbon into acetic acid. If we could only transform acetic acid into alcohol, and out of the latier could obtain sugar and starch, then we should be enabled to build up these common vegetable principles, by the so-called artificial method, from their most ultimate elements."
ref: 1843, Artizan Club (London, England), The Artizan, Simpkin, Marshall, and Company, page 106:
text: Dr. Bucknill declares that the growth and renovation of nerve-cells in the brain "are the most ultimate conditions of mind with which we are accquainted"; but instead of inferring from this that we know very little indeed about the mind, he concludes that thought, recollection, and reason are products of "the activity of the vesicular neurine of the brain."
ref: 1867, The North American Review, O. Everett, page 634:
text: Hepaticology, outside the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, still lies deep in the shadow cast by that ultimate "closet taxonomist," Franz Stephani—a ghost whose shadow falls over us all.
ref: 1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii:
glosses: Being the greatest possible; maximum; most extreme.
glosses: Being the most distant or extreme; farthest.
glosses: That will happen at some time; eventual.
examples: text: those ultimate truths and those universal laws of thought which we cannot rationally contradict
ref: 1825, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character on the Several Grounds of Prudence, Morality, and Religion: […], London: […] Thomas Davison, […] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC:
glosses: Last in a train of progression or consequences; tended toward by all that precedes; arrived at, as the last result; final.
examples: text: an ultimate constituent of matter
glosses: Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or separation; constituent; elemental.
Synonyms: sense: final
word: final
sense: most extreme
word: utmost
sense: most extreme
word: uttermost
sense: most extreme
word: supreme
Coordinate terms: sense: adjectives denoting syllables
english: last but one
translation: last but one
word: penultimate
sense: adjectives denoting syllables
english: last but two
translation: last but two
word: antepenultimate
sense: adjectives denoting syllables
english: last but three
translation: last but three
word: preantepenultimate
sense: adjectives denoting syllables
english: last but four
translation: last but four
word: propreantepenultimate
Derived terms: antepenultimate
pay the ultimate price
penultimate
super-ultimate
ultimateness
ultimate sacrifice
ultimate tensile strength
ultimate wheel
Related terms: ulterior
ultimatum
ultra
ultra-