tiercel

English

Alternative forms

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.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈtɜː(ɹ)səl/
  • Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)səl

Noun

tiercel (plural tiercels)

  1. (falconry) A male hawk or falcon.
    • 1866, [George Alfred Lawrence], “Evasit”, in Sans Merci; or, Kestrels and Falcons, volume III, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], page 126:
      In this wise, the glossy bright-eyed kestrel, whom tiercels’ training could not reclaim, shook off silver bells, and velvet hood, and broidered jesses; and fled away—to consort, henceforward for evermore, with gleds, and hawks, and such birds of prey as make their nests deep in Bohemian forests, or in the desolate places of the Wilderness that girdles the frontier of the reputable world.
    • 1967, J. A. Baker, The Peregrine, page 39:
      He is a tiercel, lean and long and supple-winged, the first of the year.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

References
  1. Walker, Adrian (2000) “Tiercel”, in The Encyclopedia of Falconry, Lanham: Derrydale Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC:
    Obsolete spellings, forms and alternatives: TARCEL, TARSEL(L), TASSEL(L), TYERCEL, TYERCLE, TIERCELET, TERCELET, TYERCLET, others.
    [...]
    Otherwise it might be combined with the species name: an obsolete example is ‘Tercell of a gerfauken’ (14865), also ‘ger-tiercel’ (190059), notwithstanding jerkin (or variant) having been the name for the male gyrfalcon from at latest the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Anagrams
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