tierce

See also: Tierce and tiercé

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:

tierce

Wikipedia

Etymology

From Old French tierce, from Latin tertia.

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtɪəs/
Audio (Southern England) (file)
(US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɪɚs/
(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtɜːs/ (card)
Audio (Southern England) (file)
Rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)s, -ɜːs

Noun

tierce (plural tierces)

(obsolete) A third.
(religion, Roman Catholicism) Synonym of terce: the third canonical hour or its service.
(now historical) A measure of capacity equal to a third of a pipe, or a cask or other vessel holding such a quantity; a cask larger than a barrel, and smaller than a hogshead or a puncheon, in which wine or salt provisions, rice, etc., are packed for shipment.
- 1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 6, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I:
  He then gave me a large piece of silver coin, such as I never had seen or had before, and told me to get ready for the voyage, and he would credit me with a tierce of sugar, and another of rum […] .
- 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 22”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
  Have an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Stubb; it was a little leaky, I thought.
- 1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, page 205:
  Again, by 28 Hen. VIII, cap. 14, it is re-enacted that the tun of wine should contain 252 gallons, a butt of Malmsey 126 gallons, a pipe 126 gallons, a tercian or puncheon 84 gallons, a hogshead 63 gallons, a tierce 41 gallons, a barrel 31.5 gallons, a rundlet 18.5 gallons.
(music) The third tone of the scale. See mediant.
(card games) A sequence of three playing cards of the same suit. Tierce of ace, king and queen is called tierce-major.
(fencing) The third defensive position, with the sword hand held at waist height, and the tip of the sword at head height.
- 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History , volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number):
  [W]e behold two men with lion-look, with alert attitude, side foremost, right foot advanced; flourishing and thrusting, stoccado and passado, in tierce and quart; intent to skewer one another.
(heraldry) An ordinary that covers the left or right third of the field of a shield or flag.
(obsolete) One sixtieth of a second, i.e., the third in a series of fractional parts in a sexagesimal number system. (Also known as a third.)