TIERCE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Tierce

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/tɪrs/ Listen

noun

Tierce n.

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.

A cask larger than a barrel, and smaller than a hogshead or a puncheon, in which salt provisions, rice, etc., are packed for shipment.

(Mus.) The third tone of the scale. See Mediant.

A sequence of three playing cards of the same suit. Tierce of ace, king, queen, is called tierce-major.

(Fencing) A position in thrusting or parrying in which the wrist and nails are turned downward.

(R. C. Ch.) The third hour of the day, or nine a. m,; one of the canonical hours; also, the service appointed for that hour.

adjective

Tierce adj. (Her.) Divided into three equal parts of three different tinctures; said of an escutcheon.

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Etymology of 'Tierce'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tierce" Quotes from Famous Books

... and omit their drill, but we forced them to go through it, Junker von Warmond, Duivenvoorde and I. Who knows how soon it may be necessary to show what we can do. Roland, my fore man, such imprudence is like a cudgel, against which one can do nothing with Florentine rapiers, clever tierce and quarto. My wheat is ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... food in the schooner, I resolved to push through with this business at once, and fetching the chopper went to work upon these barrels and chests; and very briefly I will tell you what I found. First, I dealt with a tierce that proved full of salt beef. There was a whole row of these tierces, and one sufficed to express the nature of the rest; there were upwards of thirty barrels of pork; one canvas bale I ripped open was full of hams, and of these bales I counted half a score. The white cases ...

— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... sword en tierce; Loge's blade met his with strength and delicacy. The strength Cleggett was prepared for. The delicacy surprised him. But he was too much the master, too confident of his own powers, to trifle. He delivered ...

— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... you must consult God upon it, to learn from Him how you are to put it in execution. Early to-morrow morning we will ask the Curate of St. Nicholas, who is known to be a most worthy man, to say a mass for us, and after having heard it, we will continue in prayer till the hour of Tierce." We see in this the mode of acting of one who has the spirit of God; he hurries nothing, he has recourse to prayer, and he makes use of the ordinary ...

— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... a hugeous silver book, in the shape of a half-tierce, or hogshead, of sentences, and, having filled it at the fountain, said to him, The philosophers, preachers, and doctors of your world feed you up with fine words and cant at the ears; now, here we really incorporate our precepts at the mouth. Therefore I'll not say ...

— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

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