Definition of "last"

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

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

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

Contending for principles of the last importance.

1802, Robert Hall, Reflections on War

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, 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, page 110

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, [Act I, scene v]

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, […]

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; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], 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

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.

2006, Newman, Cathy, Every Shoe Tells a Story, National Geographic (September, 2006), 83

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

The tonnage of the Duyfken of Harmensz's fleet is given as 25 and 30 lasten.

1942 (1601), T D Mutch, The First Discovery of Australia, page 14