Dictionary

tertile en · NOUN

Etymology

By surface analysis, tert- + -ile.

Meanings

1. Either of the two points that divide an ordered distribution into three parts, each containing a third of the population.
2. Any one of the three groups so divided.
   • The first tertile results include January through April's revenues.
   • Smoking (odds ratio 2·87 for current vs never, PAR 35·7% for current and former vs never), raised ApoB/ApoA1 ratio (3·25 for top vs lowest quintile, PAR 49·2% for top four quintiles vs lowest quintile), history of hypertension (1·91, PAR 17·9%), diabetes (2·37, PAR 9·9%), abdominal obesity (1·12 for top vs lowest tertile and 1·62 for middle vs lowest tertile, PAR 20·1% for top two tertiles vs lowest tertile), psychosocial factors (2·67, PAR 32·5%), daily consumption of fruits and vegetables (0·70, PAR 13·7% for lack of daily consumption), regular alcohol consumption (0·91, PAR 6·7%), and regular physical activity (0·86, PAR 12·2%), were all significantly related to acute myocardial infarction (p<0·0001 for all risk factors and p=0·03 for alcohol). 2004 September 3, Salim Yusuf, Steven Hawken, Stephanie Ôunpuu, et al., “Effect of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with myocardial infarction in 52 countries (the INTERHEART study): case-control study”, in The Lancet, archived from the original on 30 Jun 2022, page 937:
   • To determine whether that’s been the case, I broke the league into tertiles at both ends of the floor and overall. 2019 March 8, Blake Murphy, “How the Raptors have fared against elite opponents this season”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 03 Jan 2026:
   • When we start testosterone therapy, the goal is typically to raise testosterone levels into the range of about 450 to 600 ng/dL, which is considered the “middle tertile” for most laboratory reference ranges. 2025 July 8, Jamin Brahmbhatt, “The testosterone trap: Why your problem might not be ‘low T’”, in CNN, archived from the original on 16 Jul 2025:

Forms

Coordinates

pentile · vigintile · sextile · octile · tercile · septile · millile · median (2-quantile) · quintile · decile · tertile · ventile · centile · quartile · hexadecile · percentile (100) · permillile (1000)

Deriveds

intertertile

Hypernyms

quantile

Translations (3)

fi tertiili (group) · fi tertiili (point) · it terzile (group)