tertiate
/ˈtɜːʃɪeɪt/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
3
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To examine, as the thickness of the metal at the muzzle of a gun; or, in general, to examine the thickness of, as ordnance, in order to ascertain its strength.
noun
The third year of training in various Christian religious orders (especially the Jesuits).
noun
One who is in their tertiate training.
noun
The third classification of animals in some ranked taxonomic systems, such as that proposed by Linnaeus.
Example Sentences
- "We are distinctly told that one cause of the terrible famine that has been — not decimating, but tertiating — the population of Rajpootana, has been the substitution of cotton for grain culture;"
- "Seven spills of paper of precisely equal length were given round, and after an interval collected. Had any of them been dimidiated, tertiated or even decimated, the proposed election was void."
- "“The Jews…were not merely decimated, for that means only one in ten of the world’s Jews were killed by the Nazis, but tertiated. One in every three were slaughtered.”"
- "The Jewish People were not decimated…. Our people lost every third of its sons or its daughters…it was tertiated."
- "The beam made for triplicating or tertiating any weight small enough to be weighed by it."
- "such a fancy never produces any other effect, but that of tertiating or doubling the price of things."
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin tertiāt-, the perfect passive participial stem of Latin tertiō, from tertius (“third”). By surface analysis, terti- + -ate.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: tertiō
Regional Pronunciation
- British English: /ˈtɜːʃɪeɪt/
Usage
Inflected Forms
tertiates (present, singular)
tertiating (participle, present)
tertiated (participle, past)
tertiated (past)
tertiates (plural)
more tertiate (comparative)
most tertiate (superlative)