last

“Eyes Wide Shut” was the last film to be directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.

1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter V, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

Final, ultimate, coming after all others of its kind.

The last time I saw him, he was married.

I have received your note dated the 17th last, and am responding to say that[…] (archaic usage)

She told him the last news about little Georgy, and how he was gone to spend that very day with his sisters in the country.

1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:

In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year.

2013 May 25, “No hiding place”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8837, page 74:

He is the last person to be accused of theft.

The last person I want to meet is Helen.

More rain is the last thing we need right now.

Farthest of all from a given quality, character, or condition; most unlikely, or least preferable.

Japan is the last empire.

Being the only one remaining of its class.

Contending for principles of the last importance.

Three contestants will win awards, but the last prize is just a book voucher.

I will not wish you to consider me but as the last and lowest of mankind.

1797, Richard Cumberland, The Last of the Family; republished as The Posthumous Dramatick Words of the Late Richard Cumberland, Esq., volume 2, 1813, page 237:

The whole community from the patrician master to the last beggar knew that in the five months when the generous bosom of the steppe throbbed with creative life, they must toil for the subsistence of all […]

1899, Richard Savage, The White Lady of Khaminavatka: A Story of the Ukraine, page 186:

Lesser, but still important executives had offices without corner windows. The rank below this had offices without windows at all. […] The last rank had desks out in an open room.

1970, Julius Fast, Body Language, →ISBN, page 39:

Russia is a very different place than here. […] Even the last soldier knows who Malevich was, and what the Black Square is, since they were taught this in school.

2003 March 31, Marko Peljhan, “Lecture: March 31, 2003”, in Jen Budney, Adrian Blackwell, editors, Unboxed Engagements in Social Space, published 2005, →ISBN, page 110:

rear, rearmost, caboose, dernier, final, terminal, ultimate, lattermost;

the pitcher goes so often to the well that it is broken at last

последен

being the only one remaining of its class

From Middle English laste, latst, syncopated variant of latest.


last

We went there last year.

I was last to go; you're next.

The (one) immediately before the present.

It's Wednesday, and the party was last Tuesday; that is, not yesterday, but eight days ago.

When you say last Monday, do you mean the Monday just gone, or the one before that?

(of days of the week or months of the year) Closest in the past, or closest but one if the closest was very recent; of days, sometimes thought to specifically refer to the instance closest to seven days (one week) ago, or the most recent instance before seven days (one week) ago.


last

When we last met, he was based in Toronto.

How long is't now since last yourself and I / Were in a mask?

c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v]:

I'll go last as I have to add the butter last.

last but not least

Pleased with his idol, he commends, admires, / Adores; and, last, the thing adored desires.

1717, William Congreve, Samuel Croxall, John Dryden, Laurence Eusden, John Ozell, “Book X”, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Fifteen Books. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

(sequence) after everything else; finally


last

Summer seems to last longer each year.

They seem happy now, but that won't last long.

And love will last as pure and whole
As when he loved me here in Time,
And at the spiritual prime
Rewaken with the dawning soul.

1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto XLII, page 65:

Thus the red damask curtains which now shut out the fog-laden, drizzling atmosphere of the Marylebone Road, had cost a mere song, and yet they might have been warranted to last another thirty years. A great bargain also had been the excellent Axminster carpet which covered the floor;[…].

1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0016:

One of the earliest (and biggest) space weather events on record occurred in September 1859, when a massive solar eruption crashed into the Earth's magnetosphere, triggering a geomagnetic storm that lasted for days.

2023 November 15, Prof. Jim Wild, “This train was delayed because of bad weather in space”, in RAIL, number 996, page 30:

(intransitive) To endure, continue over time.

I don't know how much longer we can last without reinforcements.

(intransitive) To hold out, continue undefeated or entire.

(intransitive, slang, of a man) To purposefully refrain from orgasm

(transitive, obsolete) To perform, carry out.

en-verb

last (third-person singular simple present lasts, present participle lasting, simple past and past participle lasted)

lasts (present singular third-person)
lasting (participle present)
lasted (participle past)
lasted (past)

From Middle English lasten, from Old English lǣstan, from Proto-West Germanic *laistijan, from Proto-Germanic *laistijaną. Cognate with German leisten (“yield”).


last

2006, Newman, Cathy, Every Shoe Tells a Story, National Geographic (September, 2006), 83,
How is an in-your-face black leather thigh-high lace-up boot with a four-inch spike heel like a man's black calf lace-up oxford? They are both made on a last, the wood or plastic foot-shaped form that leather is stretched over and shaped to make a shoe.

A tool for shaping or preserving the shape of shoes.

From Old English lǣste, Proto-Germanic *laistiz. Compare Swedish läst, German Leisten Dutch leest, Proto-Germanic *laistaz (“footprint”).


last

to last a boot

To shape with a last; to fasten or fit to a last; to place smoothly on a last.


last

(obsolete) A burden; load; a cargo; freight.

Now we so quietly followed our businesse, that in three moneths wee made three or foure Last of Tarre, Pitch, and Sope ashes [...].

1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 114:

The last of wool is twelve sacks.

1866, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 1, page 169:

(obsolete) A measure of weight or quantity, varying in designation depending on the goods concerned.

1942 (1601), T D Mutch, The First Discovery of Australia, page 14,
The tonnage of the Duyfken of Harmensz's fleet is given as 25 and 30 lasten.

(obsolete) An old English (and Dutch) measure of the carrying capacity of a ship, equal to two tons.

A load of some commodity with reference to its weight and commercial value.

last

From Middle English last, from Old English hlæst (“burden, load, freight”), from Proto-Germanic *hlastuz (“burden, load, freight”), from Proto-Indo-European *kleh₂- (“to put, lay out”). Cognate with West Frisian lêst, Dutch last, German Last, Swedish last, Icelandic lest.