tertiary

1. 1.

   coming next after the second and just before the fourth in position

   Synonymsthird3rd

   Similarordinal

Other forms of tertiary

plural

tertiaries·

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 tertiary

What does tertiary mean?

tertiary means "from 63 million to 2 million years ago". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in tertiary?

tertiary has 3 syllables: ter-tia-ry. The stress falls on "ter". In IPA it is /ˈtɝʃɚi/.

What is another word for tertiary?

Close synonyms include Tertiary period, third, 3rd. 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 tertiary a common word?

tertiary is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.