Tertiary
Last Updated: January 2, 2026 at 12:30 PM
Scrabble:11 ptsWWF:10 pts8 letters
Definition of Tertiary
Adjective
Noun
- Any item considered to be of third order.
- A tertiary colour.
- Something from the Tertiary Period (the former term for the geologic period from 65 million to 2.58 million years ago).
- A tertiary feather; a tertial.
- A large stage in some extremely powerful thermonuclear weapons (resembling a greatly-enlarged secondary) which is compressed by the explosion of the secondary until ignition of nuclear fusion takes place, in much the same manner as the secondary is imploded by the primary, and which can allow for the attainment of yields of many tens or even hundreds of megatons, and likely even greater; not used in modern weapons due to a greater focus on the accurate use of sub-megaton weapons, the tremendous size of weapons incorporating a tertiary, and the lack of targets whose destruction would necessitate the use of a three-stage weapon.
"A gigaton-scale weapon would of necessity be a three-stage design (incorporating a fusion tertiary - likely with its own massive fission tamper - in addition to the fission primary and fission-jacketed fusion secondary), as a reasonably-sized primary would likely have difficulty imploding to ignition the enormous secondary that would be required to reach a one-gigaton yield with a two-stage thermonuclear."
Anagrams of Tertiary
Words You Can Make
50 words can be made from the letters in "tertiary":