tertium quid
- noun
- /ˈtɜrtiəm kwɪd/
- Formal
:
tertium quid
- The artist's new style represents a tertium quid, merging elements of realism and abstraction into something entirely distinctive.
Examples
-
The hospitable collegium is a tertium quid, neither a collective nor an aggregation of members.
Academic text (2000) -
Villey divided Montaigne's career into three stages: the stoic, the skeptical, and a tertium quid that could be labeled very loosely as the Epicurean.
Academic text (1991) -
Hence, the end result of inculturation is something new, a tertium quid, going beyond the current culture and the previous ways of understanding and living the gospel.
Academic text (2004) -
The tertium quid that Peirce persistently provides for is the active role of the interpreting mind.
Academic text (1994) -
The committee decided to create a tertium quid, which combined ideas from both proposals while introducing a unique perspective.
-
In their discussion, they identified a tertium quid that bridged the gap between two conflicting viewpoints in the debate.
Surface Forms
Morphology
tertium + quid
The phrase is a Latin borrowing whose constituents are not English words (the input shows no dictionary entries), so a B1 learner who only 'knows the constituent words' as listed would not be able to derive the meaning. Even if the Latin roots translate roughly to 'third' + 'thing', the construction functions as a specialized idiomatic label in English and thus is not transparently compositional for typical learners without prior exposure.
Etymology
Tertium quid comes from Latin words tertium and quid, which together mean 'third thing'. People used it to name something that is not one of two opposite choices but is different from both, so today tertium quid means a 'third option' or something 'in between'.
