Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 November 8

= November 8 =

"Toissa"
Finnish has a word "toissa", meaning specifically "the one before the previous one", which can be used for anything that can be counted and ordered. For example, "toissa vuonna" means "in the year before the previous year". Finnish doesn't have any words for previousness beyond that. I have found this to be a rather unique word in Finnish. Does a similar word exist in any other language? Or even better, does some other language have words for further previousness? J I P &#124; Talk 00:08, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Japanese has words like 一昨日 (ototoi, "day before yesterday") and 一昨年 (ototoshi, "year before last"). — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 )  00:13, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Looking at the Jisho entry for 一昨 (issaku), this appears to be the word to use for "one previous". You can even do something like 一昨昨日 to mean "two days before yesterday". — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 )  00:45, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * German has vorgestern and übermorgen for ereyester and overmorrow. Temerarius (talk) 08:45, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * German has also vorvergangen and vorletzt, e.g.: Im vorvergangenen Jahr (alternatively: im vorletzten Jahr) betrug der Steuersatz x%: In the year before last, the tax rate was x%. --Morinox (talk) 10:12, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * An example of this usage used productively: Mireille Mathieu’s song “Paris vor hundert Jahren” with the lines Denn alle deine Sorgen haben Zeit bis morgen, Haben Zeit bis über- über- übermorgen (Approx: Then all your worries can wait until the day after the day after the day after tomorrow).70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:14, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Semi-related: penult, and more specifically penultimate, which means "next to last" or "second to last" in a series. There are also derived terms like antepenultimate but they're more obscure. Matt Deres (talk) 15:34, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Dutch has a prefix eer-, similar to English ere- as in ereyesterday, but slightly more general. For example, verleden jaar is the past year; then eerverleden jaar is the year before that. It can also be repeated: eereergisteren is the day before the day before yesterday. It is not fully general, though; you cannot say that Ivana was Donald's eereer-wife. --Lambiam 19:46, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary has a series of translations for "three days ago", though I don't know how many of those are real rather than nonce words. HenryFlower 08:34, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I had a look at them, and some obviously have a duplicated "ere" prefix, whereas some literally, word-for-word, say "three days ago". There might be some languages that actually have a separate word for "three days ago" but as I don't understand all the languages on the page, I don't know which ones they are, if any. J I P  &#124; Talk 22:26, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I can vouch for the Chinese 大前天 to an extent (the extent being that I know the equivalent 大后天 -- "the day after the day after tomorrow" -- is in real, widespread use). HenryFlower 19:36, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * French has avant-hier (and surlendemain), for whatever that's worth. —Tamfang (talk) 02:08, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This Endris Night, although "endris" appears only in chronological senses, and has a sense of "recent" rather than "penultimate". (You could also use "penultimate", however.)  "Endris" makes sense with "night" and "year", but it wouldn't make sense if you were talking about people in a lineup.  Also, OED lists it as obsolete.  Nyttend backup (talk) 15:35, 12 November 2020 (UTC)