Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.

[Q]: Is penultimate commonly used in English, or are its variations (such as second to last) more common? I need to use it in conjunction with the expressions First Payment Date and Last Payment Date to name variables while programming. In my mother language (Portuguese) Penultimate Payment Date would be fine, but it feels strange in English. (I know feels strange is not very helpful, but I'd like to know how to convey the meaning in the most natural way.).
[A]: Someone I know who is a native speaker of Spanish and a professor at a university in the United States has complained that when he used the word 'penultimate' in class, the students don't know what he's talking about. The word is perfectly, unimpeachably, 100% correct. It is a bit of an upscale, literary word though. It certainly is a 'term of art' in fields like linguistics, where it is used commonly to refer to syllables. I searched for the word in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and divided the results by section: spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper, and academic, and got these results: spoken: 10 fiction: 53 magazine: 55 newspaper: 36 academic: 93 total: 247 So, it is certainly used in all areas of English, with a moderate skew towards higher registers like academic writing. Depending on the intended audience, a writer contemplating using the word 'penultimate' should consider that there is a relatively high likelihood that word will not be understood. Instead of 'penultimate', the phrasing in common usage is either 'next to last' or 'second to last'. Both of those should be universally understood. Interestingly, Google Ngrams shows that the word 'penultimate' rose in usage (in published books) steadily from 1800 to about 1990, and since 1990 it has shown a steep dropoff, taking us back to usage levels from the late 1960s. The better-understood terms 'second to last' and 'next to last' are less common (again, though, in published booksGoogle Ngrams tells us nothing about spoken usage), with 'next to last' having more historical usage but a slow tapering off of usage since 1960 and 'second to last' increasing in usage from 1970 on, with both enjoying approximately the same usage today.


[Q]: What word means to make something obsolete? For example, the automobile made the horse and buggy obsolete. How would the word obsolete be applied as a verb? obsoleted The automobile obsoleted the horse and buggy. bleech. made obsolete The automobile made obsolete the horse and buggy. Not bad, but there's room for improvement. EDIT: I'm looking for a verb that has an edge; that captures the upheaval and aggressiveness involved in displacing a product or industry. Killed is a bit strong. killed The automobile killed the horse and buggy. A bit overstated. ran out of business The automobile ran the horse and buggy out of business marginally better, but still not good. disrupted the automobile disrupted the horse and buggy Better applied to an industry, like so the automobile disrupted the transportation industry in the early 20th century; particularly the horse and buggy. Wordy. smashed The automobile smashed the horse and buggy. More along the lines of what I seek, but a bit improper. XXX The automobile XXX the horse and buggy. What verb fits best here?.
[A]: Interestingly, you automatically used a word in your question that you didn't even comment onperhaps without realizing what you'd done: displace: 1 a : to remove from the usual or proper place specifically : to expel or force to flee from home or homeland // displaced persons 1 b : to remove from an office, status, or job 1 c obsolete : to drive out : BANISH 2 a : to move physically out of position // a floating object displaces water 2 b : to take the place of (as in a chemical reaction) : SUPPLANT So, in your example sentence: The automobile displaced the horse and buggy.


[Q]: There are many English words with silent letters, words like gnome or island that are spelt with consonants that aren't pronounced, but are there any words that work the other way round, with a pronunciation that includes extra sounds or syllables that are not in the spelling? I can't think of any real examples, hence this question, but a made-up example would be if gnome were spelt nome but pronounced with a g at the start. Or if people started pronouncing offer as 'ofter' as a sort of weird parallel to after. Note: I don't mean words like rough, where the f sound is spelt gh, because in those cases the spelling does still include letters (however seemingly illogical) for each of the sounds.
[A]:
Probably 'yes', but it depends on what you mean. There isn't actually a clear way to identify which sounds in a word correspond to which letters: for example, rough, which you say has letters for 'each of the sounds', could be analyzed as r- + -ou- + -gh or as r- + -o- + ugh. When similar issues arise with other words, it makes it pretty subjective to decide whether the word has consonant sounds that 'aren't part of the spelling' or that just have an complex relationship to the spelling. Some words that could be considered to meet your criteria: Consonants Any word with an epenthetic voiceless plosive between a nasal and a following consonant. For many speakers, a productive process causes a sound like /t/, /p/ or /k/ to be inserted after the sounds /n/, /m/ or // respectively in various environments. In most words, the epenthetic plosive is not written, so you could say that there is a /p/ in the pronunciation but not the spelling of warmth, dreamt, hamster, seamstress, a /t/ in the pronunciation but not the spelling of sense, glance, a /k/ in the pronunciation but not the spelling of strength, angst. In eighth and in one pronunciation of threshold, a digraph that usually represents a single sound corresponds instead to two sounds: /t/ and /h/ respectively. You could say that the /t/ in eighth or the /h/ in that pronunciation of threshold isn't part of the spelling. Something similar applies for speakers who use the pronunciation /hat/ instead of /hat/: whether it's spelled height or heighth, it seems like one of the two sounds at the end is not explicitly represented in the spelling. In some accents of British English, the vowels found in words like saw and draw is regularly followed by epenthetic /r/ before another vowel. This means that the words sawing and drawing are pronounced with an /r/ that 'isn't part of the spelling'. Vowels or syllables Many words with syllabic resonants, or sequences of a schwa followed by a resonant, have no particular letter that marks the syllabicity. Words ending in -thm or -sm are the most obvious example. Other examples are more dialect dependent, but words like hour are disyllabic for some speakers.