Adjective

(-)

The best, most favourable or desirable, especially under some restriction.

Finding the optimal balance between features and price is a common problem.

# (artificial intelligence) Describing a search algorithm that always returns the best result.

Adjective

(wikipedia ultimate) (-)

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.

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.

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

those ultimate truths and those universal laws of thought which we cannot rationally contradict

Incapable of further analysis; incapable of further division or separation; constituent; elemental.

an ultimate constituent of matter