Penult is a linguistics term for the second-to-last syllable of a word.
It is an abbreviation of penultimate, which describes the next-to-last item in a series.
For example, the main stress falls on the penult in such English words as banána, and Mississíppi, and just about all words ending in -ic such as músic, frántic, and phonétic.
Occasionally, "penult" refers to the last word but one of a sentence.
The terms are often used in reference to languages like Latin and Ancient Greek, whose position of the pitch accent or stress of a word falls only on one of the last three syllables, and sometimes in discussing poetic meter.