In reply to:
Count one forward from the last. You're now at the penultimate. Now count two forward from the last one. Where are you now?
Well, I'm in a different place, of course, because you've switched the type of numbers from ordinal to cardinal. The definition tsuwm questioned used ordinal numbers and that's what we were looking at.
Take a look at "what we were looking at" as a clause. The ultimate word is "at"; the penultimate word is "looking."
OK, Faldage, what is the antepenultimate word in the clause? If you know that "antepnultimate" means third from last position, isn't it a normal mental operation to count back, point to "at" and saying "first," then to "looking" and saying "second" and finally to "were" and saying "third"? It's just how we would count ordinal positions there.
Apparently for some readers "third from last" means fourth position and for others "third from last" means third position. I can't agree with birdfeed and say that both ways of counting make sense to me because for me, each and every time, "third from last" would clearly be the antepenultimate position.
Oh, and by the way, the reason I used "draft" for that musical score was to imply that measure numbers weren't on the score. I was imagining a draft of a work without measure numbers, and should have stated as much.
Interesting discussion here, anyway, to show, once again, the sometimes ambiguity of our most marvelous language.
