In the example "J'ai bu un tiers de la bouteille". The audio speaker is a woman and the word bottle is feminine-why use the masculine version tiers?

Question

Thank you.

Accepted Answer

Hi Robin,
In the case of one third , meaning 33.33% (1/3) of something, the noun un tiers de stands on its own and doesn't agree with the noun it applies to (or the person speaking).
e.g. 
Un tiers des électeurs ne s'est pas déplacé pour voter = One third of the electorate didn't go and vote
Un tiers de la famille a été décimé par les inondations = One third of the family was decimated by the floods
Un tiers de la foule était composé de femmes = A third of the crowd was made up of women
Hope this helps!

Answer

I appreciate the reply in regard to tiers, but tierce is used once in an example and I am not sure when I should use it.

Answer

Hi Robin,
The adjective 'tiers/tierce' will only be used in certain expressions like 'tierce personne' or 'tierce partie' to mean a third party -
Also in the following expressions -
Le tiers-monde = The third World
Le Tiers-état = The third estate/tier of society 
The noun 'tierce' is used in some card games to denote three cards following each other.
It has very limited use...
Hope this helps!

Answer

Merci!

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If you're saying that most of the time tiers does not agree in gender, I think that should be added to the main lesson. The way it is currently worded - "You use tiers (masculine) or tierce (feminine)" - with no additional follow-up information, suggests that it does agree in gender. If I hadn't read this comment I would have basically just learnt it completely wrong.

Answer

I'm confused about "tiers" being a 'un mot invariable'.

In this "J'ai bu un tiers de la bouteille" tiers is surely a noun, and thus an adjective would have to agree with it? After all we don't make bouteille agree with vin in "J'ai bu une bouteille du vin" and it has exactly the same structure.

Answer

Hi Jessica,
I have rephrased my answer regarding -
un tiers de quelque chose = a third  (1/3) of something
by it doesn't agree with the object it refers to.
Thank you for pointing out, hope this clarifies things.

Answer

Thank you, although, I'd probably be a bit more precise about which bit is the noun.

«Un tiers de» is a phrase of [indefinite article] [noun] [preposition]. (You could have «le tiers de», as well as phrases with other prepositions, like «un tiers à ...» and «un tiers pour ...».)

(I can't immediately think of any [article] [noun] [noun] combinations in French. English has things like "a boat race" or "a steel bar" whilst french seems to use [article] [noun] [preposition] [noun], as in «une course de bateux» or «une coque en acier».)

edit: The lesson on compound nouns with à,de and en is probably worth pointing people to: Compound nouns formed with prepositions à/de/en in French