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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).

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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 '11 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 '11 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. – FumbleFingers Apr 29 '11 at 21:14
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@FumbleFingers we use quartile all the time! – corsiKa Apr 29 '11 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 '11 at 22:17
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