Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Tertiary period   /tˈərʃəri pˈɪriəd/   Listen
adjective
Tertiary  adj.  
1.
Being of the third formation, order, or rank; third; as, a tertiary use of a word.
2.
(Chem.) Possessing some quality in the third degree; having been subjected to the substitution of three atoms or radicals; as, a tertiary alcohol, amine, or salt. Cf. Primary, and Secondary.
3.
(Geol.) Later than, or subsequent to, the Secondary.
4.
(Zool.) Growing on the innermost joint of a bird's wing; tertial; said of quills.
Tertiary age. (Geol.) See under Age, 8.
Tertiary color, a color produced by the mixture of two secondaries. "The so-called tertiary colors are citrine, russet, and olive."
Tertiary period. (Geol.)
(a)
The first period of the age of mammals, or of the Cenozoic era.
(b)
The rock formation of that period; called also Tertiary formation. See the Chart of Geology.
Tertiary syphilis (Med.), the third and last stage of syphilis, in which it invades the bones and internal organs.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Tertiary period" Quotes from Famous Books



... long, if irregular, period of comparative cold. Except, to some extent, the last of these points, there is no difference of opinion, and therefore, from the evolutionary point of view, the Cretaceous period merits the title of a revolution. All these things were done before the Tertiary period opened. ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... vista of man's gradual progress seems to recede interminably and the era of primitive man to stretch backward to an enormously remote period. In truth, discoveries have been made which are claimed to carry man back beyond the Quaternary and into the Tertiary Period of geology, since cut and scratched bones have been found in Pliocene deposits, which some geologists of experience believe to have been the work of human hands. Still more remote are some seemingly chipped flints and bones cut in a way that suggests human action, which have ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... much more closely related (in having the giraffe, hippopotamus, and certain musk-deer) to southern Africa than it now is; for southern and eastern Africa deserve, if we divide the world into five parts, to make one division by itself. Turning to the dawn of the Tertiary period, we must, from our ignorance of other portions of the world, confine ourselves to Europe; and at that period, in the presence of Marsupials{393} and Edentata, we behold an entire blending of those mammiferous forms which now eminently characterise ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin

... experienced a similar sense of bodily comfort, when we reached Arizona, returning by the Southern Pacific Railroad. One morning I got up from the sleeper and walked out into the rare, crisp air of a way station, delighted to find myself literally as dry as a bone, and a very old bone, too; tertiary period, let us say. The sudden change in the strait proved fatal to one of our officers. He had been ailing for a few days, but on the night after we doubled the cape woke up from a calm sleep in wild delirium, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... "the lower and auriferous part of the channel of an old river of the Tertiary period " ('Century'). "The lowest portion of a lead. A gutter is filled with auriferous drift or washdirt, which rests on the palaeozoic bed-rock." (Brough ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris



Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com