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.
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Question: I live in Australia, but am expected to use US English in my work. I am therefore used to spelling '-ise' as '-ize'. I was a little surprised to find that 'enterprise' is almost universally spelt with '-ise'. Is there any particular reason that this is the case for this example, when '-ize' is so widely preferred in US English?.

Answer: For one, because the etymology is different. -ise (-ize) is a causative suffix in formalise, realise etc. (to make something formal, to make something real...) But enterprise is not 'to make something enterpre' or similar (whatever that might mean). The prise bit comes as a past participle of French prendre (to grasp, to take). Another answer is that enterprize is actually attested, and was apparently used more than enterprise in the second half of 18th century (N-gram viewer).


Question: 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.).

Answer: 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.


Question: Possible Duplicate: Real quick question If you listen real close... Can you swing by real quick... Sentences like the above two are what I often hear in daily life. If I didn't hear them in the real world, I would probably be more ready to say 'If you listen really close...' and 'Can you swing by really quick...'. Is real being used as an adjective in this scenario? If so, is the usage of adj.+ adj. a common practice in English language?.

Answer:
As intensifiers (words that make an adjective stronger), the adjective form of a word (without the ly) is used very often instead of the adverb form in English. As some of the other answers and comments have remarked, these words are indeed adverbs because they modify adjectives. For example: bloody stupid (U.K.), wicked cold (Boston), dead certain. If you said bloodily stupid in England, wickedly cold in Boston, or deadly certain pretty much anywhere, it would sound real funny. People say real hot but don't often say real true, because real is an intensifier in the first but not the second. (See Google Ngram).