The Collaborative International Dictionary
Tertiary \Ter"ti*a*ry\, a. [L. tertiarius containing a third part, fr. tertius third: cf. F. tertiaire. See Tierce.]
Being of the third formation, order, or rank; third; as, a tertiary use of a word.
--Trench.(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.
(Geol.) Later than, or subsequent to, the Secondary.
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(Zo["o]l.) 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.'' --Fairholt. Tertiary period. (Geol.)
The first period of the age of mammals, or of the Cenozoic era.
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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.
WordNet
n. the third stage; characterized by involvement of internal organs especially the brain and spinal cord as well as the heart and liver
Usage examples of "tertiary syphilis".
He is as hideous as ever, face now marked with the sort of distressing eczema that sometimes afflicts those suffering from tertiary syphilis.
These wards were filled with derelicts: old women with dementia, impecunious veterans down on their luck, noseless men with tertiary syphilis and the like.
The forehead was serrated with wrinkles above a nose that, while the files said it should be short and squat, was aquiline and, round the right nostril, eaten away, poor chap, by what looked like the badge of tertiary syphilis.
I would rather, he said later, have ten thousand years of tertiary syphilis than ten seconds of the crabs.