tercio
noun
tercio is a noun meaning “Any of the three stages of a bullfight: the vara, the banderilla and finally the death” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-E-R-C-I-O, and it appears about once in every 56 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of tercio is tercios.
What does tercio mean?
noun
- 1
Any of the three stages of a bullfight: the vara, the banderilla and finally the death.
- 2
A mutually supportive infantry formation made up of pikemen, swordsmen and arquebusiers or musketeers.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of tercio
- tercios plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is tercio?
Tercio appears about once in every 56 million words in written English, the 234,209th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does tercio come from?
Borrowed from Spanish tercio.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).