ultimate
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: simple
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.
Inflected forms:
form: more ultimate
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most ultimate
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: Final; last in a series.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: […] they [the sounds of an echo] next strike the ultimate secondary object, then the penultimate and antepenultimate; […]
gloss: Last in a word or other utterance.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Being the greatest possible; maximum; most extreme.
pos: adj
examples: the ultimate pleasure
the ultimate disappointment
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.
"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."
"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."
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."
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.
gloss: Being the most distant or extreme; farthest.
pos: adj
gloss: That will happen at some time; eventual.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Last in a train of progression or consequences; tended toward by all that precedes; arrived at, as the last result; final.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: those ultimate truths and those universal laws of thought which we cannot rationally contradict
gloss: Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or separation; constituent; elemental.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: an ultimate constituent of matter
Related words: ulterior
ultimatum
ultra
ultra-
Derived words: antepenultimate
pay the ultimate price
penultimate
super-ultimate
ultimateness
ultimate sacrifice
ultimate tensile strength
ultimate wheel
Translations: