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tier.

One who ties (knots, etc.).

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈtaɪ.ə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtaɪ.ɚ/General-American
  1. One who ties (knots, etc.).

  2. Something that ties.

  3. A child's apron.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From tie + -er.

noun/ˈtɪə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɪɚ/General-American
  1. A row or range, especially one at a higher or lower level than another.

  2. A rank or grade; a stratum.

    Stoke City were playing in the second tier of English football before being promoted to the Premier League.
  3. A (typically forested) range of hills or mountains, especially in South Australia or Tasmania; a mountain.

    Australia
  4. A horizontal row of panels within a comic strip.

Where this word comes from

From Middle French tier, from Old French tire (“rank, sequence, order, kind”), probably from tirer (“to draw, draw out”). Alternatively, from a Germanic source related to Middle English tir (“honour, glory, power, rule”), Old English tīr (“glory, honour, fame”), Old Norse tírr (“glory, honour, renown”).

verb/ˈtɪə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɪɚ/General-American
  1. To arrange in layers.

    transitive
  2. To cascade in an overlapping sequence.

    transitive
  3. To move (data) from one storage medium to another as an optimization, based on how frequently it is accessed.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle French tier, from Old French tire (“rank, sequence, order, kind”), probably from tirer (“to draw, draw out”). Alternatively, from a Germanic source related to Middle English tir (“honour, glory, power, rule”), Old English tīr (“glory, honour, fame”), Old Norse tírr (“glory, honour, renown”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.