10 uses
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Definition
most extreme as in final, best, worst, most important, or most fundamental
The exact meaning of ultimate depends upon its context. For example:
- "the ultimate decision-maker" — the final
- "the ultimate car" — the best
- "the ultimate insult" — the worst
- "the ultimate source" — original or most fundamental
- "the ultimate sacrifice" — most extreme
- Ultimately, at five minutes past three that afternoon, Smith admitted the falsity of the Fort Scott tale.3 — Answer (76% in)
- On the advice of a doctor, who had thought the experience would aid her to regain "a sense of adequacy and usefulness," she had taken an apartment, then found a job-as a file clerk at the Y.W.C.A. Her husband, entirely sympathetic, had encouraged the adventure, but she had liked it too well, so much that it seemed to her unchristian, and the sense of guilt she in consequence developed ultimately outweighed the experiment's therapeutic value.1 — Last To See Them Alive (35% in)
- This biography always set racing a stable of emotions-self-pity in the lead, love and hate running evenly at first, the latter ultimately pulling ahead.2 — Persons Unknown (68% in)
- Ultimately, after several confinements in institutions and children's detention centers, he was returned to the custody of his father, and it was many years before Bobo saw him again, except in photographs that Tex John occasionally sent his other children-pictures that, pasted above white-ink captions, were part of the album's contents.3 — Answer (29% in)
- Neither one had ever before referred to the ultimate penalty in the State of Kansas-the gallows, or death in The Corner, as the inmates of Kansas State Penitentiary have named the fad that houses the equipment required to hang a man.3 — Answer (34% in)
- This plan was opposed by the special assistant prosecuting attorney, Logan Green, who, certain that "temporary insanity" was the defense his antagonists would attempt to sustain in the forth-coming trial, feared that the ultimate outcome of the proposal would be, as he predicted in private conversation, the appearance on the witness stand of a "pack of head-healers" sympathetic to the defendants ("Those fellows, they're always crying over the killers.4 — The Corner (18% in)
- The fourteen men ultimately elected consisted of half a dozen farmers, a pharmacist, a nursery manager, an airport employee, a well driller, two salesmen, a machinist, and the manager of Ray's Bowling Alley.4 — The Corner (24% in)
- The import of the remark was clear to his audience: it meant that two young soldiers, who had been standing trial for the murder of a Kansas railroad worker, had received the ultimate sentence.4 — The Corner (77% in)
- The hearing, which at one point was transferred to Lansing, where Judge Thiele heard Smith and Hickock testify, took six days to complete; ultimately, every point was covered.4 — The Corner (83% in)
- However, even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably, first in the state courts, then through the Federal courts until the ultimate tribunal is reached-the United States Supreme Court.4 — The Corner (87% in)
There are no more uses of "ultimate" in In Cold Blood.
Typical Usage
(best examples)