How to Use tertiary in a Sentence

tertiary

adjective
  • Headaches often occur during the tertiary stage of the illness.
  • The books were rather secondary, or even tertiary.
    — Roxane Gay, Los Angeles Times, 9 Apr. 2026
  • For the hedge funds and tycoons who own clubs, what happens on the field is tertiary.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 20 Apr. 2021
  • What kind of a secondary tertiary trauma does that lend itself to?
    — Malina Saval, Variety, 10 June 2023
  • Putting EVs on the road is a secondary or maybe even a tertiary effect.
    — Los Angeles Times, 25 Apr. 2022
  • These tertiary weapons create openings for attacks or to gain distance from a foe.
    — Gieson Cacho, Mercury News, 26 Sep. 2025
  • Even better was driving on the secondary and tertiary roads through farm country.
    — Eric Bangeman, Ars Technica, 12 July 2018
  • The margins of these films were stuffed with secondary and tertiary allusions.
    — Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 7 Apr. 2021
  • The badge itself, the history and the romance, is tertiary, at best.
    — New York Times, 8 July 2022
  • If the secondary bud is damaged as well, the tertiary bud, which produces little to no fruit, will bloom.
    — oregonlive, 9 Aug. 2023
  • These are tertiary lymphoid structures.
    — Sooji Nam, CBS News, 27 Feb. 2026
  • Awards are tertiary to his motivation for team to remain strong in the win column.
    — Dana Scott, The Arizona Republic, 30 Sep. 2021
  • Something that will give a tertiary market like Huntsville an outsized shot at booking top tours.
    — Matt Wake | [email protected], al, 27 Oct. 2020
  • Then everything else is the tertiary storylines around it.
    — Brayden Garcia, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 11 Nov. 2025
  • But Rikhoff sees that as a tertiary part of Romo’s work rather than his primary skill.
    — Richard Deitsch, SI.com, 29 Oct. 2017
  • Beyond that, plants have primary, secondary, and tertiary buds.
    — Kevin Dupzyk, Popular Mechanics, 20 Mar. 2017
  • The Halle attacker, meanwhile, had no such secondary or tertiary aims.
    — Rajan Basra, Time, 10 Oct. 2019
  • There are four stages of the disease — primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary.
    — Mari A. Schaefer, Philly.com, 25 Aug. 2017
  • This was a prolonged febrile seizure in an otherwise healthy child at a tertiary children’s hospital.
    — Nisha Narayanan, STAT, 5 June 2026
  • Something like the deadline for a trade exception is a tertiary concern that might not be figured out for weeks, maybe even months.
    — Connor Letourneau, SFChronicle.com, 18 Mar. 2020
  • There’s no evidence of secondary or tertiary infections thus far.
    — Teri Sforza, Oc Register, 13 May 2026
  • That was the first metal band a lot of tertiary market kids like me heard in 1983 or whatever.
    — Matt Wake | [email protected], al, 27 Feb. 2020
  • It was replaced with MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), an oxygenate.
    — Bob Weber, chicagotribune.com, 21 Oct. 2021
  • There are 60 dates on the books, mostly in secondary and tertiary markets, and more will be announced in the future.
    — Andy Greene, Rolling Stone, 6 Nov. 2025
  • However, club-level artists often still play shows in tertiary markets - that is, if there's a large club-sized venue in that market.
    — Matt Wake, al.com, 20 June 2019
  • The palette is varied, although secondary and tertiary hues far outpace primaries.
    — Christopher Knight, latimes.com, 9 Oct. 2017
  • Giannis is going to get his, as long as the Cavs can work to shut down the secondary and tertiary options the under will come in.
    — Joe Williams, USA TODAY Sportsbook Wire, 28 Oct. 2019
  • Princess Margaret has thus far been relegated to tertiary scenes with witty one-liners.
    — Martha Sorren, refinery29.com, 19 Nov. 2020
  • Even the tertiary characters, such as Geraldine, can’t help but center whiteness in the most mundane acts.
    — Brooklyn White, Essence, 29 Apr. 2022
  • The timing is often tertiary to kidnapping schemes, shoot-outs, and terminally flawed lawmen caught in labyrinthine plots.
    — Tres Dean, Vulture, 21 Dec. 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tertiary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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