Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Arranged in or consisting of sets or groups of three, as a compound leaf with three leaflets.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Arranged in threes; characterized by an arrangement of parts by threes; in botany, used especially of a compound leaf with three leaflets, or of leaves whorled in threes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having the parts arranged by threes.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective botany Having three divisions (or leaflets)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective (of a leaf shape) consisting of three leaflets or sections

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[New Latin ternātus, from Medieval Latin, past participle of ternāre, treble, from Latin ternī, three each; see tern.]

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Examples

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  • Looking through 1800 Woodcuts by Thomas Bewick and His School, and found an image called "Ternate Bat." The image has it standing up looking rather like Dracul himself. But in a cute, bat-sy sort of way.

    August 25, 2008

  • Seen here.

    Interestingly, when I went googling for that image, I found that THIS page ranked higher than that one. Six hours after I posted the word. Power of Wordie!

    August 26, 2008