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What is the last day of the month of November?
What is the date of the final day of November?
Which day is the end of November?
What is the ultimate day of November?
We're talking in the above about the 30th, if we're talking dates and not specific days of the week. The end of November is the same as the last date.
The antepenultimate date would be the 28th of November. We count first, second, third backwards to find that date if we don't want to subtract. At least, that's how I would count those first, second, and third positions to determine the antepenultimate date in November.
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The last is the last. The end comes after the last. Third from the last is, at best, ambiguous. If it's ambiguous, the hell with it.
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Which day is the end of November?
The end of November is not a day. It is the instant of midnight between November 30 and December 1. It is also the beginning of December.
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>Third from the last is, at best, ambiguous.
that's why it's better to say, "the last but three", or fourth from the end.
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Joe, we're agreeing with you, already. And far be it from me to turn this into a (trumpet blare, horse neigh) Food Thread, but mincemeat has no meat in it, yes?
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The end comes after the last in certain situations, Faldage, but here we are counting. The end becomes a numerical place when we refer to positions in line--at least in this commonplace way of counting people in line, ducks in a row, dates on a calendar, pages in a book.
The end of a book would be in normal speech the last numbered page on which one found text. Sure, the book might have blank sheets after the end of the book, but the last page would be the same number as what we would ordinarily speak of as the end of the book. "I read that Michener novel in one night, from the first page to the last, start to finish, beginning to end! All 900 pages!" And the person would not mean any page after that last that did not include text when referring to the novel itself. (Of course, there's the problem with the first page rarely being page one in novels, but that's an altogether different situation.)
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The end comes after the last in certain situations
So, in reference to antepenultimate, third from the end is now ambiguous and third from the last flat out wrong. How bout third to the last?
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OK. I've got an idea.
Let's say you're reading through a draft of a choral work, 12 pages and 120 measures long--lots of notes in each measure, highly complicated.
And let's say your group cannot get the ending of the piece right. Everything's fine till you hit the last staff--and it's as though the whole group crashes.
So, your conductor says,
"Go back three bars from the end."
Or:
(If this were a show-offy kind of word nerdy conductor)
"Return to the antepenultimate measure."
Or:
"Go back to the third measure before the end."
Or:
"Return to the third from last measure."
All these places would be the same place in my head.
I think part of the problem is we don't ordinarily hear people say, "Return to the second from last position." We just don't use second from last. We use, instead, next to last. The word next has elbowed out the word second when counting backwards in a series from first (i.e., last) position backwards into the series.
Oh, well, I've written too much about this and I don't think we're really going to come to a point of agreement.
I do agree that the words "end" and "last" have to be carefully used and are not always interchangeable, but I also believe that there are times that "end" and "last" are referring to the same thing, e.g., last page of a book = end of the book.
And to tsuwm: I'm obviously the only one here who doesn't have a problem with antepenultimate as defined above.
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I'm with ya WW. 
formerly known as etaoin...
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Well, *our director would say, "go to measure (e.g.,) 103."
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