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I am looking for a proper single work term to describe one third of a calendar year. Trimester does not seem correct as it seems to refer to a period of three months (one third of a pregnancy or one third of an academic year).

4 Answers 4

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Tertile.

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    +1 for the find, but if almost nobody knows the word, then almost nobody knows the word. Why use a word that most readers will have to look up in a dictionary to understand? "three months" is pretty succinct :)
    – e.James
    Apr 29, 2011 at 20:39
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    I had a tertile once we used to feed it flies but it died. The end.
    – Robusto
    Apr 29, 2011 at 21:10
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    @e.james: Erm... "three months" is pretty succinct, but "four months" is more like a third of a year. Not that I think much of tertile, which is really just a ridiculously uncommon high-falutin alternative to third. Would we seriously want to call a two-month span a sextile? I think not. Apr 29, 2011 at 21:14
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    @FumbleFingers we use quartile all the time!
    – corsiKa
    Apr 29, 2011 at 21:25
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    @glowcoder: Trimester certainly does mean three months, from the Latin tres meaning three and menses meaning months.
    – Henry
    Apr 29, 2011 at 22:17
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The term for a four month period is quadrimester. Quad = 4 mense= month

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    You are correct, but it would be good if you backed this up with further references to help people, because it is not a word commonly used in today’s English. It comes from Latin quadrimestris, with the meaning you give it. The French spell it quadrimestre as the British do, but the Spanish spell this word cuatrimestre in their language, with the d>t change explained by influence of their word for four, cuatro.
    – tchrist
    Oct 21, 2014 at 0:18
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    The french spell it quadrimestre, not quadrimester. Just like we say trimestre and not trimester Aug 25, 2015 at 8:37
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There is a difference between a duration period of three months as in "trimester" and an event occurring every 3 months as in "quarterly". In the same vein you would have a quadrimester or tri-annually(which means three times a year; not every 3 months) both being correct in the right context.

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triannually, triannually ,1/3 of the year

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    You've written triannually twice. Could you please provide a quote or a reference to back up your suggestion.
    – Mari-Lou A
    May 13, 2014 at 6:57
  • Triannual would be once every 3 years though, like how biannual is once every 2 years and semiannual is once every half year (aka twice per year). Oct 19, 2023 at 0:31

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