a. and sb. [f. TER- + CENTENARY, after L. ter centēni three hundred each. For the special use in reference to years cf. CENTENARY.]

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  A.  adj. Of or belonging to the number of three hundred; usually, of or pertaining to a completed period of 300 years; tercentennial.

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1836.  E. Bickersteth, Test. Reformers, Introd. lxx. The preaching of the Tercentenary Sermons, on the 4th of October 1835, was a commencement of a practice too important and too useful to be discontinued.

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1844.  S. R. Maitland, Dark Ages, xiii. 221. I mean no offence to the gentleman from whose tercentenary sermon it purports to be an extract.

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1882–3.  Schaff’s Encycl. Relig. Knowl., III. 2421/1. Bishop Francis David … died in 1579,—an event which received in 1879 its tercentenary celebration in the land of his martyrdom [Transylvania].

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  B.  sb. A duration of three hundred years; the three-hundredth anniversary of an event, or a celebration of it.

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1835.  W. G. Clark, in Cambr. Ess., 283. The grammar-schools, which have for the most part celebrated their tercentenary.

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1879.  Sat. Rev., 4 Oct., 412/1. Duo-centenaries, ter-centenaries, and quin-centenaries have all lately taken place.

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1884.  Nonconf. & Indep., 17 July, 698/2. The tercentenary of the death of William of Nassau … has been celebrated this week at Delft.

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  Hence Tercentenarian a., that has lasted three centuries; three hundred years old (cf. centenarian); Tercentenarize v. trans. nonce-wd., to celebrate the tercentenary of.

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1881.  Sat. Rev., 23 July, 116/2. The wholesale excommunication of a tercentenarian Established Church.

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1866.  Pall Mall G., 14 Nov., 10. How Shakspeare was lately tercentenarized everybody knows.

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