The Collaborative International Dictionary
next-to-last \next-to-last\ adj. next preceding the last; as, the figures in the next-to-last column. [Narrower terms: junior(prenominal), third-year]
Syn: penultimate.
Wiktionary
a. (altform next to last English)
WordNet
adj. next to the last; "the author inadvertently reveals the murderer in the penultimate chapter"; "the figures in the next-to-last column" [syn: penultimate]
used of the third or next to final year in United States high school or college; "the junior class"; "a third-year student" [syn: junior(a), third-year]
Usage examples of "next-to-last".
Trying to make up with his wife, my grandfather brought home the first of the many parakeets my grandparents would have over the years, and gradually, living on top of us all, Desdemona and Lefty made their next-to-last home together.
The word "atbash," incidentally, derives from the very procedure it denotes, since it is composed of aleph, taw, beth, and shin—the first, last, second, and next-to-last letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
And during the next-to-last television debate—when Congressman Borax rose in desperate rebuttal to Clarissima Strunt—Shepherd Mibs at last came into his own.
As the next-to-last step, Sillen-Tullberg and Moller combined steps 1 and 2 to ask: is there any tendency for more or less conspicuous ovulations to be associated with a particular mating system?
She turned the next-to-last photograph and again exhaled, reprieved, viewing the corpse's unburned right leg and foot.
Last night at the Tyrrell House he'd taken the next-to-last shift of waiting for Bill to call in again.