tertiary

1. 1

   Of third rank or order; subsequent.not-comparable

   • An untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder an
2. 2

   Possessing some quality in the third degree; especially having been subjected to the substitution of three atoms or radicals.not-comparable

   • a tertiary alcohol, amine, or salt
3. 3

   Of quills: growing on the innermost joint of a bird's wing; tertial.not-comparable

   • The primary, secondary, and tertiary wing feathers (remiges) of adult mourning doves are shed and replaced yearly in an orderly sequence, so flight is possible during molt. […] Little is known about the shedding sequence of the secondary or

syn. ternary · tertial

1. 1

   Any item considered to be of third order.

   • The primary rhizomes usually die during the growing season. The tertiaries and secondaries, however, live through the winter and become primary rhizomes the following year.
   • There is no evidence that irrigators fail to keep their supply canals (tertiaries, watercourses, ditches) open when they need water.
2. 2

   A tertiary colour.

   • My principal objection is against the compound or derivative tints, given under the denominations of secondaries and tertiaries.
3. 3

   Something from the Tertiary Period (the former term for the geologic period from 65 million to 2.58 million years ago).

   • There is, within our area, a great gap between the Eocene group and the later tertiaries, indicated by the difference of their organic contents. Between the existing fauna of our seas and the oldest stage of the later tertiaries, there is a
4. 4

   A tertiary feather; a tertial.

   • Coincident with the dropping out of the fifth or sixth primary is the molt of the outermost tertiary, followed by the adjoining tertiary, and then the third tertiary, which in most passerine birds is the last or innermost.
5. 5

   A large stage in some extremely powerful thermonuclear weapons (resembling a greatly-enlarged secondary) which is compressed by the explosion of the secondary until ignition of nuclear fusion takes place, in much the same manner as the secondary is imploded by the primary, and which can allow for th

   • A gigaton-scale weapon would of necessity be a three-stage design (incorporating a fusion tertiary - likely with its own massive fission tamper - in addition to the fission primary and fission-jacketed fusion secondary), as a reasonably-siz
6. 6

   A member of a Roman Catholic third order; a layperson who participates in activities similar to those engaged in by men and women who take religious vows (respectively the first and second orders), and who may wear some elements of an order's habit such as a scapular.

   • Immediately after her arrival in Ferrara, while she was still striving to secure the foundation of her exemplary reformed community of Dominican tertiaries, [Lucia] Brocadelli also renewed her attempts to enhance [Girolamo] Savonarola's sai