primary, secondary and????

[gogugogu]

give me a hand:

When we descirbe "a market" for instance, as PRIMARY MARKET, SECONDARY MARKET , but how could we say the third one? Third market???--I bet it's not correct.

How about when we want to say the PRIMARY AGANT, SECONDARY AGENT, and ??? AGENT.

Which word is proper to express the meaning of "third" here?

Give me a big hand, thx in advance.

[RonC]

...tertiary.

The word means "the third" although it often is used to mean "small or insignificant compared to others in the same group" (like a tertiary market).

The pronunciation is "tur - shi - airy" (at least where I come from.)


AFAIK, there's no common word for "the 4th." Things usually only get compared in threes.

Hope that helps.

[Casiopea]

tertiary from Greek "tersius" meaning, third. tertiary is pronounced ter-she-airy and tershairy in North American English.

[Mister Micawber]

.
And 'quaternary' is not too rare in some fields. The next one starts with 'quint-', no doubt, but I hesitate to try completing it.

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