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paenultima law. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
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English
Etymology
First attested in 1892; Latin paenultima (“penult”) + English law.
Noun
paenultima law (singulare tantum)
- (linguistics and orthoëpy, sometimes “the paenultima law of accentuation”) The rule of Classical Latin pronunciation which states that a word receives antepenultimate stress if its penult is a short or metrically light syllable, but receives penultimate stress if its penult is a long or metrically heavy syllable.
1892, The Journal of Philology, XX, page 138:He calls attention to the large number of words found over and over again with a metrical accent which does not follow the ‘paenultima law’, but falls on the last syllable…or even on the fourth syllable from the end.