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De Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is de oudste universiteit van de Nederlanden en tevens de oudste nog bestaande katholieke universiteit ter wereld.
The Catholic University of Leuven is the oldest university of the Low Countries and also the oldest still existing catholic university in the world.
Usage notes
Like ten, ter occurs mostly in fixed idiomatic expressions, while voor and in (+ de/het) are the standard. With feminine nouns ending in -ing, -te, -heid, etc., it still enjoys limited productivity:
ter wikifiëring ― intended to be wikified (literally, “for the wikification”)
ter (first-person singular presentteño, first-person singular preteritetiven, past participletido) ter (first-person singular presenttenho, first-person singular preteritetivemortive, past participletido, reintegrationist norm)
Murmurai murmuradores / non fartaivos de murmurar / que an'que vos salten os ollos / teño de rir e cantar(folk song)
Let's gossip, you gossipers / Never get tired of gossiping / 'cause even if your eyes pop out / I ought to laugh and sing.
1707, Salvador Francisco Roel, Entremés ao real e feliz parto da nosa raíña:
Afonso: E como està o afillado? Christobo: Esse jà quer ir a Escola, pero porque non tèn sayo està decote na Eyra para escorrentar o Gando. Afonso: Pois esso non e ben feyto, porque e vivo coma vn allo, fino coma vnha pimenta, e se quer ser Lecenceado an que venda os bois do jugo lle teño de dar estado.
Afonso: How is doing my godchild? Christobo: He already want to go to school, but since he has no robe is all the time in the field to drive away the livestock. Afonso: But this is not correct, because he is smart as a whip, acute as a pepper grain, and if he wants to be a bachelor, even if I have to sell the yoke oxen, I ought to give him estate.
Xavier Varela Barreiro, Xavier Gómez Guinovart (2006–2018) “teer”, in Corpus Xelmírez - Corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela: Instituto da Lingua Galega
Stant ārae circum, et crīnēs effūsa sacerdōs ter centum tonat ōre deōs, Erebumque Chaosque, tergeminamque Hecatēn, tria virginis ōra Diānae.
Altars are standing all around , and the priestess — with her hair flowing — thunders from her lips thrice a hundred gods’ : Erebus and Chaos, triform Hecate, the three faces of virgin Diana. (The priestess who invokes “ter centum” deities may be calling three hundred gods, 100 gods three times, or “hundreds of” or “a great many,” and some of the named gods have tri-part symbolism. Threes have special significance in myth, folklore and ritual; see: Lease, Emory B., The Number Three, Mysterious, Mystic, Magic. Classical Philology, Jan., 1919, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 56-73.)
Usage notes
Ter is a prefix or suffix designating the third instance of a thing, thus following bis(“second”) and preceding quater(“fourth”).
Perhaps cognate to Lithuanian and Latviante(“here!, here you are!”),[1][2] or to the related Lithuanian prefix te-,[1][3] which can either express the hortative mood — as in tedirba, "may he work" — or, more pertinently, the meaning "only" — as in teturiu, "I have only". Possibly more distantly related to Russianтепе́рь(tepérʹ, “now”)[1][2] and to Ancient Greekτῆ(tê, “here!”).[4]
Alternatively, the Prussian morpheme -er- may be functionally equivalent to Latvian-ik-, Lithuanian-ik-, -iek-. For example, er(“until”) parallels Lithuanianiki, ik, and erains(“everyone”) parallels Latvianikviens. Under this hypothesis, ter would be composed of t-(demonstrative prefix) + -er(suffix denoting extent), and thus be equivalent to Lithuaniantik(“only”) or tiek(“that much”).[5][6]
Adverb
ter
The meaning of this term is uncertain. Possibilities include: 1. only, merely; 2. than, other than.
bhe kai ſteſmu nimaſſi kittawidin pogalbton boūt / ter kai tans praſtan Crixtiſnan is Deiwan naunagimton
and that he may not be helped in any other way / that he was born new through baptism out of God
Usage notes
In the Old Prussian corpus, this only occurs one time outside of the combination ter ains; see the quotation above. In the original German text of the Catechism, the word denn(“than”) was used:
vnnd das jhm nicht anders geholffen werden moͤge / denn das es durch die Tauffe auß Gott Newgeboren
and that he may not be helped in any other way / than that he was born new through baptism out of God
Accordingly, Nesselmann glosses ter as als(“than”),[7] which has displaced denn in this sense in modern German. However, there are good reasons to think that it may literally mean "only", discussed in the etymology above, and this is the meaning assumed by Fraenkel,[1] Endzelīns,[3] and Mažiulis.[8][9] Schmalstieg mentions both potential meanings.[2]
References
↑ 1.01.11.21.3Fraenkel, Ernst (1955, 1962–1965) “tè”, in Litauisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, volume II, Heidelberg-Göttingen: Carl Winter and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, page 1071
^ Daniel Petit (2015) “On distributive pronouns in the Baltic languages”, in Baltic Linguistics, volume 6, →ISSN
^ G. H. F. Nesselmann (1873) “ter”, in Thesaurus linguae prussicae. Der preussische Vocabelvorrath (in German), Berlin: Ferd. Dümmlers Verlagsbuchhandlung; Harrwitz & Gossmann, page 187
Please see Module:checkparams for help with this warning.Mažiulis, Vytautas (1988–1997) “ter”, in Prūsų kalbos etimologijos žodynas [Etymological dictionary of Old Prussian] (in Lithuanian), Vilnius
^ Vytautas Mažiulis (1981) Prūsų kalbos paminklai [Prussian-language monuments] (in Lithuanian), volume 2, Vilnius: Mokslas, page 221
For verbs that distinguish between particípio passado curto (short past participle) and particípio passado longo (long past participle) — for example morrer(“to die”), whose short past participle is morto and long is morrido — when ter is used as an auxiliary verb, the long past participle must be used (like haver, and unlike ser and estar).