ternary

1. 1.

   having three units or components or elements

   “a ternary operation”

   “a treble row of red beads”

   “overcrowding made triple sessions necessary”

   “triple time has three beats per measure”

   “triplex windows”

   Synonymstrebletripletriplex

   Similarmultiple

Other forms of ternary

plural

ternaries·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about ternary

What does ternary mean?

ternary means "the cardinal number that is the sum of one and one and one". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in ternary?

ternary has 3 syllables: ter-na-ry. The stress falls on "ter".

What is another word for ternary?

Close synonyms include three, 3, III, trio, threesome. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ternary a common word?

ternary is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.