What does tertiary mean?
Tertiary means third in rank, order, stage, or degree. Its most familiar modern use is in education, where tertiary institutions and tertiary education refer to study beyond secondary school. It is also common in healthcare: tertiary care is specialist treatment or support provided after less specialized stages, and tertiary describes the most severe degree of a burn. Historically and in formal classification, tertiary can label any third-order division, including the third category in a taxonomic system. As a noun, the word is uncommon but can denote an institution or organization occupying a third level, especially in education. The word carries a technical, institutional tone rather than an everyday one, although “third-degree” is more usual when describing the severity of a burn. Learning tertiary therefore means learning both a basic ordering idea and a cluster of specialized applications: what comes after secondary education, specialist medical care, and the third degree of seriousness or classification.
Third in rank, order, stage, or degree; especially relating to education beyond secondary school, specialist healthcare, or the third degree of burns.
"The university is one of the country's leading tertiary institutions."
In medicine, “third-degree” is often more usual than “tertiary” when describing burns.
A third-level institution, especially one providing tertiary education; more generally, an institution, place, or person of the third rank.
"Several public tertiaries now offer degree programmes in environmental science."
This noun use is uncommon and is encountered mainly in formal or educational contexts.
The plural is used mainly for institutions or organizations at the tertiary level.
"The two tertiaries have agreed to share specialist teaching facilities."
From Latin tertius, meaning “third,” tertiary still points to third place—though today it also names what comes after secondary education.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does tertiary come from?
Tertiary comes from Latin tertius, “third,” built on the numeral family represented by Latin tres (“three”) and terni (“three each”). The Latin adjective tertiārius, meaning “of or belonging to the third,” supplied the word and its sense of third rank or order. English later extended the term to tertiary institutions, tertiary care, and third-degree burns.
Related word forms
How tertiary is actually used
The adjective is formal and especially common in education, healthcare, and formal classification. The noun is comparatively uncommon; in ordinary descriptions of burns, “third-degree” is usually more natural than “tertiary.”