Lost Word Of The Day (28)

Pen is not technically a prefix but, according to The Oxford English Dictionary, is used in the formation of nouns and adjectives with the sense of nearly, almost, all but. The obvious example is penultimate which means almost last but not quite, the second to last.

A companion adjective but used in respect of centrality is penintime which was used in the late 17th and early 18th centuries to denote second to the innermost. An example of its usage would be “Venus is the penintime planet in the Solar system”.

One to lock away for future use, methinks.