English
tierce
Pronunciation
  • (RP) IPA: /ˈtɪəs/
  • (America) IPA: /ˈtɪɚs/
  • (RP) IPA: /ˈtɜːs/ (card)
Noun

tierce (plural tierces)

  1. A cask whose content is one third of a pipe; that is, forty-two wine gallons; also, a liquid measure of forty-two wine, or thirty-five imperial, gallons.
    • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 22
      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, p. 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.
  2. A cask larger than a barrel, and smaller than a hogshead or a puncheon, in which salt provisions, rice, etc., are packed for shipment.
  3. (music) The third tone of the scale. See mediant.
  4. (card games) A sequence of three playing cards of the same suit. Tierce of ace, king and queen is called tierce-major.
  5. (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
      [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.
  6. (heraldiccharge) An ordinary that covers the left or right third of the field of a shield or flag.
  7. (religion, Roman Catholic) Synonym of terce#English|terce: the third canonical hour or its service.
  8. (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.)


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