tierce
/ˈtɪəs/US/ˈtɪɚs/
tierce noun: a third.
Noun
tierce (plural tierces)
- A third.
- Synonym of terce: the third canonical hour or its service.
- Synonyms:
- terce
- A cask of a certain size, or its volume used as a measure of capacity. Larger than a barrel but smaller than a hogshead.
- He then gave me a large piece of silver coin, such as I never had seen or had before, and told me to get ready for the voyage, and he would credit me with a tierce of sugar, and another of rum […].1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 6, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I
- Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 22”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
- The third tone of the scale. See mediant.
- A sequence of three playing cards of the same suit. Tierce of ace, king and queen is called tierce-major.
- The third defensive position, with the sword hand held at waist height, and the tip of the sword at head height.
- [W]e behold two men with lion-look, with alert attitude, side foremost, right foot advanced; flourishing and thrusting, stoccado and passado, in tierce and quart; intent to skewer one another.1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number)
- An ordinary that covers the left or right third of the field of a shield or flag.
- One sixtieth of a second, i.e., the third in a series of fractional parts in a sexagesimal number system. (Also known as a third.)
Proper noun capitalized: Tierce
Tierce (plural Tierces)
- A surname from French.
Synonyms of tierce
Forms of tierce
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | tierces |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Tierces |
Origin of tierce
From Old French tierce, from Latin tertia.
Borrowed from French Tierce.
Words that rhyme with tierce
Questions about tierce
- What does tierce mean?
- Tierce means a third.
- What part of speech is tierce?
- Tierce can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce tierce?
- Tierce is pronounced /ˈtɪəs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of tierce?
- The plural of tierce is tierces.
Words near tierce in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tierce (page history and authors); Tierce (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tierce.wav.
Cite this entry: “tierce.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tierce. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.