The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ultimate \Ul"ti*mate\, a. [LL. ultimatus last, extreme, fr. L. ultimare to come to an end, fr. ultimus the farthest, last, superl. from the same source as ulterior. See Ulterior, and cf. Ultimatum.]
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Farthest; most remote in space or time; extreme; last; final.
My harbor, and my ultimate repose.
--Milton.Many actions apt to procure fame are not conductive to this our ultimate happiness.
--Addison. -
Last in a train of progression or consequences; tended toward by all that precedes; arrived at, as the last result; final.
Those ultimate truths and those universal laws of thought which we can not rationally contradict.
--Coleridge. -
Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or separation; constituent; elemental; as, an ultimate constituent of matter.
Ultimate analysis (Chem.), organic analysis. See under Organic.
Ultimate belief. See under Belief.
Ultimate ratio (Math.), the limiting value of a ratio, or that toward which a series tends, and which it does not pass.
Syn: Final; conclusive. See Final.
Usage examples of "ultimate analysis".
It yeas vastly more intoxicating than to hear confessions from men who did not, in the ultimate analysis, take them very seriously, and it was a very saintly sensation, this business of expressing peaceable sentiments with immense gravitas and moral authority.
An ultimate analysis showed eight elements present: hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, magnesium, silicon, potassium, manganese, and zinc.
In the ultimate analysis of Reason, we find all reason identified with this abyss.
He realized at last how vain, in the ultimate analysis, had been the dream that had lured him to the stars.
The tale is after all in the ultimate analysis a tale, a piece of literature, intended to have literary effect, and not real history.
In the ultimate analysis, they mattered only because they mattered to her, not because of what anyone else might think.
And let's face it, you know, in the ultimate analysis that's a proper response in contemporary terms.
Mayor Black owned six of them personally, a matter about which Diablo had never been entirely happy despite the rationalization that the South Africans and the American knees were allegedly on the same side in the ultimate analysis.
Beauty and delight are inalienable in the ultimate analysis, or rather in the ultimate experience on the higher planes.
In the ultimate analysis, the world of Nature was granular--discontinuous.
In the ultimate analysis, the world of Nature was granular -discontinuous.
The Asians believed that both the core sample taken by the Ukrainians, and the ultimate analysis of the layers of that core, which resulted in a derived time history of the motion of the Martian spin axis, were seriously flawed.
Anyhow, since I was omniscient in those days, I knew that in some ultimate analysis, Good and Evil were complementary, equal.