Word.ws English Dictionary

tetractys

tetractys noun: a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows, representing the fourth triangular number and having mystical significance to the Pythagoreans.

Noun

tetractys

  1. A triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows, representing the fourth triangular number and having mystical significance to the Pythagoreans.
    • ON the subway home, I noticed that the tattoo-esque logo for Solange includes a honeybee sitting in the middle of what looked like an early design by the 17th-century mystic Jakob Böhme: a flaming tetractys.2009 July 2, Cintra Wilson, “Riches at Rainbow’s End”, in New York Times

Origin of tetractys

Borrowed from Ancient Greek τετρακτύς (tetraktús).

Questions about tetractys

What does tetractys mean?
Tetractys means a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows, representing the fourth triangular number and having mystical significance to the Pythagoreans.
What part of speech is tetractys?
Tetractys is a noun.

Words near tetractys in the dictionary

  1. tetractinellids
  2. tetractines
  3. tetractinomorph
  4. tetractinomorphs
  5. tetracts
  6. tetractys
  7. tetracube
  8. tetracubes
  9. tetraculture
  10. tetracultures
  11. tetracuspid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tetractys (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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