terceiro

Forms

terceiro (feminine terceira, masculine plural terceiros, feminine plural terceiras)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin tertiārius (“containing a third; third”), written Old Galician-Portuguese terçeiro in the oldest texts.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Nascentes notes that it took the place of tertius (“third”), from which the Latin adjective is formed with the suffix -ārius.^[4][6][1] The learned doublet is terciário.^[1]

The same Latin word is Galician terceiro, Spanish tercero, Catalan tercer, Old Occitan tersier and Old French tercier.^[7][1] The shortened form Old Galician-Portuguese tercer of the medieval texts matches the Catalan word.^[8][8][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss's first records are of the 13th century, as tercer and terceyro.^[2] The Cantigas de Santa Maria have terçeira and tercer: duas partes leixa e di ben a terçeira “leave out two parts and tell the third well”, and a tercer dia ressocitó-o “on the third day he raised him to life”.^[8] These records already have the ordinal sense.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Cardoso (1569) and Pereira (1697) gloss terceiro only with Latin sequester and internuntius, the go-between whom two parties trust.^[9][10] Morais (1789) gives a mediator, a broker and, figuratively, a procurer; his edition of 1813 adds the ordinal, the third person of the verb and the Ordem Terceira, the lay order of Saint Francis.^[11][12] Nascentes explains that it was the third order he founded, after the Friars Minor and the Poor Clares.^[4] In law terceiro is a third party to a contract or suit; in Brazil it was a sharecropper owing a third of the crop, and recently a worker supplied by an outside firm.^[2][13]

Timeline

• 1200s – first records, spelt tercer and terceyro.^[2][3]
• 1200s – terçeira and tercer dia in the Cantigas de Santa Maria.^[8]
• 1300s – the spellings terceira and tereçeiro.^[2]
• c. 1400 – terceiro in a fragment of the Flos Sanctorum (witness 1380–1425).^[14]
• 1569 – Cardoso glosses terceiro as sequester, a go-between.^[9]
• 1789 – Morais defines it as a mediator, a broker and a procurer.^[11]
• 1813 – Morais adds the Ordem Terceira and the third person of the verb.^[12]

Meanings

Numeral

1. third: coming after the second in a series: Moro no terceiro andar.^{[2][5][13][1]}

Noun

1. The one in third place.^[2][13]
2. A mediator or intercessor (medianeiro); also a go-between in love affairs, a procurer (alcoviteiro).^[2][13][15]
3. A third person; someone else, not the speaker nor the listener: Não contes isto a terceiros.^[2][5][1]
4. (law) A third party: a person outside a legal relationship or contract, or one who has an interest in a suit between others.^[2][13][5]
5. (Brazil) A sharecropper who gives a third of the crop to the landowner.^[2][13]
6. (business) A worker who serves a firm through a contracted outside company.^[2]
7. (religion) A member of a third order, especially the Franciscan one; a tertiary (terciário).^[2][5][15]

Adverb

1. In the third place, thirdly.^[2][16]

Word family

• terceirizar
• terceirização
• terceirista

Related words

• terço
• três
• terciário
• Latin tertius
• Spanish tercero

Usage notes

Terceiro is also a surname, in origin a nickname from the numeral.^[17] In popular European Portuguese o terceiro andar “the third floor” is the head.^[15]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. terceiro
3. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. terço
4. ^ a b c Nascentes, Antenor (1966), Dicionário etimológico resumido, Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, p. s.v. terceiro
5. ^ a b c d e Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, revised online edition (2023–) of the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea (2001), https://dicionario.acad-ciencias.pt, p. s.v. terceiro
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ a b c d e Instituto da Lingua Galega, Dicionario de dicionarios do galego medieval (DDGM), ed. Ernesto González Seoane, Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/ddgm, p. s.v. terceiro
9. ^ a b Cardoso, Jerónimo (1569–1570), Dictionarium ex lusitanico in latinum sermonem, Lisboa: João Álvares (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. terceiro
10. ^ Pereira, Bento (1697), Thesouro da lingoa portuguesa, in the 1697 edition of his Prosodia (1st ed. 1647; CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. terceiro
11. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1789), Diccionario da lingua portugueza composto pelo padre D. Rafael Bluteau, reformado, e accrescentado, 2 vols., Lisboa: Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, p. 2, 453
12. ^ a b Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 767
13. ^ a b c d e f Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. terceiro
14. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. terceiro
15. ^ a b c Porto Editora (2013), Grande Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Porto: Porto Editora, p. 8917
16. ^ Aulete, Francisco Júlio Caldas, Dicionário contemporâneo da língua portuguesa (1st ed. 1881), online as Aulete Digital, Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, https://aulete.com.br, p. s.v. terceiro
17. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1952), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 2: Nomes próprios, Rio de Janeiro, p. s.v. terceiro