Penult

In linguistics, the penult is the penultimate syllable of a word (for example, “tab” is the penult of the word “establish”). The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultimate syllable. These terms are used in the study of languages in which the lexical stress of a word changes considerably depending on the case or declension of the word (e.g. Ancient Greek), and sometimes it is used in the discussion of lexical stress of poetry.