Dictionaries › English

tiercel

Pronunciation: /ˈtɜː(ɹ)səl/

The English word “tiercel” has 1 meaning listed here.

noun

  1. A male hawk or falcon.

Etymology

From Middle English tercel, from Old French terçuel, from Late Latin tertiolus, the diminutive of Latin tertius (“third”). Sources disagree whether the connection is that the males of most species of birds of prey favoured in falconry are smaller than the females by about a third, or whether it refers to the supposition that only one egg in three yields a male.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “tiercel” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.