>I just received an email from Code Magazine containing an excerpt from a new book. The book is "Essential ASP.NET 2.0" by the improbably named Fritz Onion. This sentence grabbed my eye:
>
>"ASP.NET 2.0 does not offer a penultimate solution for storing client state, but it does introduce three new features that should be considered any time you are looking for a place to store state on behalf of individual users."
>
>Why is that word misused so often? It does NOT mean "more than ultimate." (Which would be what exactly? Isn't that like being "very unique"?). If you don't happen to know the definition and don't feel like looking it up, penultimate means "next to last." Granted, that may not be the most intuitive meaning in the world, but if someone is going to use a 50 cent word they should know what it means, don't you think? Particularly if they are a published author or a professional editor?
>
>There. I feel better.
My favorite in this light was a health club I belonged to in California that sent out invitations reading "In lieu of the Grand Opening of our Walnut Creek Club we would like to invite you ... "
I think they thought it was derived from 'luau' and somehow meant "celebration" <bg>
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
