Ulterior vs Ultimate - What's the difference?
ulterior | ultimate | Related terms |
Situated beyond, or on the farther side.
Beyond what is obvious or evident.
Being intentionally concealed so as to deceive.
* 1956–1960 , (second edition, 1960), chapter ii: “Motives and Motivation”, page 32:
(label) Happening later; subsequent.
:an ulterior action
* 1840 , in The Chemist , volume 1, page 141:
Final; last in a series.
* {{quote-book
, year= 1677
, isbn=
, date=
, author= (Robert Plot)
, title= The natural history of Oxford-shire: Being an Essay Toward the Natural History of England
, url= http://books.google.com/books?id=EUqd_M1x40QC&pg=PA15
, page= 15
, chapter= Of the Heavens and Air
, passage=
}}
(of a syllable) Last in a word or other utterance.
Being the greatest possible; maximum; most extreme.
*
Being the most distant or extreme; farthest.
That will happen at some time; eventual.
Last in a train of progression or consequences; tended toward by all that precedes; arrived at, as the last result; final.
* Coleridge
Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or separation; constituent; elemental.
The most basic or fundamental of a set of things
The final or most distant point; the conclusion
The greatest extremity; the maximum
(uncountable) The sport of ultimate frisbee.
Ultimate is a related term of ulterior.
As adjectives the difference between ulterior and ultimate
is that ulterior is situated beyond, or on the farther side while ultimate is final; last in a series.As a noun ultimate is
the most basic or fundamental of a set of things.ulterior
English
Alternative forms
* ulteriour (obsolete)Adjective
(-)- Motives, of course, may be mixed; but this only means that a man aims at a variety of goals by means of the same course of action. Similarly a man may have a strong motive or a weak one, an ulterior motive or an ostensible one.
- A rather deep red coloration, which appears by the action of the first bubbles of chlorine, but which soon disappears by the ulterior action of this gas
Usage notes
Ulterior is primarily used today to mean impure, covert, external motives, and generally not opposed to etymological antonyms. In the comparative sense “beyond, farther”, the Latin antonym is , which is not used in English (compare (m)/(m) for “nearest/farthest (cause etc.)”). In the sense “after, subsequent”, it can be opposed to (m), but the sense “after” is now archaic (compare (m)/(m) for “first/last”).Derived terms
* ulterior motiveAntonyms
*External links
* * * ----ultimate
English
Adjective
(wikipedia ultimate) (-)- the ultimate pleasure
- the ultimate disappointment
- Hepaticology, outside the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, still lies deep in the shadow cast by that ultimate "closet taxonomist," Franz Stephani—a ghost whose shadow falls over us all.
- those ultimate truths and those universal laws of thought which we cannot rationally contradict
- an ultimate constituent of matter
