adjectives - A word to describe someone or something that is not last?


I'm looking for a word that describes the state of not being last. A word that would apply to everything in an ordered list that is not the last thing in that list.


From



I wasn't the last person to finish the race.



to (the phrasing is off, but it seems to illustrate my point)



I was .. person to finish the race.



One word that comes to mind is "intermediate", but I don't think that includes the first item in a list.



Answer



In formal writing, esp., in the fields of programming, linguistics, the word non-final is already in use.


On Stackoverflow (java):



What is (a) non-final variable?



In René Kager, A Metrical Theory of Stress and Destressing in English and Dutch (Lingistics) -- Google Books:



… if the rightmost stress is on the final syllable, the primary stress can either be on the final syllable (112a), or on the rightmost stressed non-final syllable (112b) … [emphasis added]




[EDIT]
See also ***** :
medial on ODO



1.2 Phonetics (Of a speech sound) in the middle of a word:
A total of 15 items were included on this task requiring students to delete initial, medial, and final phonemes from words [emphasis added]



Although medial, tends to suggest something closer to the middle, it's not necessarily so. In the example above, anything that is not initial or final is referred to as medial.


***** However, medial excludes the initial, which is why it is not a candidate for the OP's case.


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