tier

Pluraltiers

Formstiers, tiering, tiered

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A row or rank of things, especially one placed above or below others.

   The theater's boxes rise in three gilded tiers above the orchestra seats.

   Vines grew on each tier of the terraced hillside.

   Similarrow, level, layer, rank

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A level in a system ranked from top to bottom, such as a grade of quality or a layer of society.

   Under the new pay scale, nurses move up a tier after five years of service.

   Both cities sit in the top tier of global financial centers.

   Similarlevel, grade, rank, band, echelon

   Note

   Much of its ranking happens inside compounds, hyphenated before a noun: a second-tier club, top-tier players. Reviewers also bolt it onto a comparison to grade quality bluntly; reviewing The Lord of the Rings: Gollum for The Guardian in 2023, Nic Reuben called its dialogue school play-tier, which puts it near the bottom of the scale.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To arrange or build something in layers, one level above another.

   Landscapers tiered the steep backyard into three planted terraces.

   Architects often tier the seats of a lecture hall so everyone can see the board.

   Similarterrace, layer

4. 4
   verbintransitive

   To fall or spread downward in a series of overlapping layers or stages.

   Layers of chiffon tier from the waist to the hem, each one overlapping the next.

   The roof's slate shingles tiered down toward the gutter like fish scales.

   Similarcascade

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To move data from one storage medium to another according to how often it is accessed, as a way of optimizing the system.

   The storage array automatically tiers hot data onto flash and pushes cold data to spinning disks.

   Administrators can tier rarely accessed logs to object storage to cut costs.

   Note

   Storage engineers sort data by temperature: hot data, read often, stays on fast, costly media such as flash, while cold data moves down to slower, cheaper disks, tape or cloud archives. The levels themselves are storage tiers, and the process, which can run automatically or on a schedule, is tiering.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   One horizontal row of panels running across a comic strip.

   The cartoonist designed the Sunday strip so its top tier could be dropped by newspapers short on space.

   Each tier of the strip moves the story forward by a single beat.

   Similarrow

7. 7
   USTY-er/ˈtaɪ.ɚ/UKUKTY-uh/ˈtaɪ.ə/US

   nouncountable

   A person who ties things, such as knots.

   A skilled tier can finish a dry fly in under five minutes.

   The sailing instructor was a patient tier of knots, showing each loop slowly.

   Note

   Here the word is simply tie plus the doer's ending -er, as in runner or baker, and it is said in two syllables, like tie-er. It only shares its spelling with a level or rank, which came into English from Middle French tier and Old French tire, meaning rank, sequence or order.

8. 8
   USTY-er/ˈtaɪ.ɚ/UKUKTY-uh/ˈtaɪ.ə/US

   nouncountable

   A device or other thing that ties something.

   On the farm, the hay baler's automatic tier knots twine around every bale.

   A battery-powered rebar tier lets one worker fasten crossing bars far faster than by hand.

9. 9
   nounAustraliacountable

   A range of hills or mountains, typically forested, especially in South Australia or Tasmania; also, a single mountain.

   Cloud sat low on the tier all morning, hiding the forest on its upper slopes.

   Settlers cleared the lower slopes but left the timbered tiers above the valley untouched.

   Similarrange

   Note

   In Australian use the plural with the names a stretch of high, forested country: in Nick Brodie's The Vandemonian War (2017) a party heads for the tiers and lakes, scouring the country. The singular can pick out one mountain, as when a driver in Robbie Arnott's Flames (2018) passes the snow-capped tier and drives into the forest on its foothills.

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