terce
/tɜːs/
"terce" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“terce” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 5
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The third hour of daylight (about 9 am).
Corpus desk
Index EN-terce · terce · English
terce · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | terce |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tɜːs/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “terce” in English
Rare enough to double-check
terce is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /tɜːs/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for terce, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: Late Middle English, from Old French terce, from Latin tertia (“third; the third hour”). The correct English form is terce, spelled T-E-R-C-E.
Definition
- 1The third hour of daylight (about 9 am).
- 2The service appointed for this hour.
- 3A widow's right, where she has no conventional provision, to a liferent of a third of the husband's heritable property.
Etymology
Late Middle English, from Old French terce, from Latin tertia (“third; the third hour”).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.