Editor's Corner

Hi folks. My husband and I were watching something on YouTube a few weeks ago. I don’t remember if it was about space, the differences between American and British English, or the history of something obscure. What I do know is that the presenter said “quaternary.” I think most of us are familiar with primary (first), secondary (second), and tertiary (third), but those are pretty much the only ranking words we use regularly.

Of course, I couldn’t leave it at that, I had to find out what more was out there. Here’s what I found: These terms are derived from Latin and used to describe ordered levels, from Wikipedia:

These are the top 12:

• Primary (1st)
• Secondary (2nd)
• Tertiary (3rd)
• Quaternary (4th)
• Quinary (5th)
• Senary (6th)
• Septenary (7th)
• Octonary (8th)
• Nonary (9th)
• Denary (10th)
• Undenary (11th)
• Duodenary (12th)

It starts getting a little hairy after that. Depending on where you use the numbers (math or science), which numbers you’re looking for (ordinal or cardinal), and which language you are using (English or Latin), answers change. I found the following list from Transformers. No, not really. The following list is composed of the Latin words for the first ten terms in the previous list., from alpharithims:

• Primus – primary
• Secundus – secondary
• Tertius – tertiary
• Quartus – quaternary
• Quintus – quinary
• Sextus – senary
• Septimus – septenary
• Octavus – octonary
• Nonus – nonary
• Decimus – denary

Optimus Prime: More than meets the eye!

Transformers: Robots in disguise!

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | KE – Documentation

Pronouns: she/her | Call via Teams | jackhenry.com

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