also tessera-, a. Gr. τέσσαρα, -ερα, neuter pl. and comb. form of τέσσαρες, -ερες four, used in Greek compounds, and forming the first element in a few English words adopted from or formed on Greek. Tessaradecad [DECAD], a group of fourteen. Tessaradecasyllabon [DECASYLLABON], a line of fourteen syllables. Tessaraglot a., in, of, or pertaining to four languages; = TETRAGLOT. Tessarakost [ad. Gr. τεσσαρακοστή a fortieth]: see quot. Tessaraphthong [after DIPHTHONG], a group of four vowels. Tesseratomic a. [after dichotomic], involving division into four parts.
1855. W. H. Mill, Applic. Panth. Princ. (1861), 152. In the text of St. Matthew, dividing the *tessarodecads at the captivity.
1874. Farrar, Christ, 8. The symmetrical arrangement into tesseradecads.
c. 1610. Bolton, Hypercritica, iv. § 3. Chapman’s Iliads, those I mean which are translated into *Tessara-decasyllabons, or lines of fourteen Syllables.
1716. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., III. 73. Whose *Tessaraglott Bible [Complutensian Polyglot] was finish’d about 1517.
1851. Borrow, Lavengro, xiv. I. 191. A tessara-glot grammar … of the French, Italian, Low Dutch, and English tongues.
1850. Grote, Greece, II. lxiii. VIII. 138. Receiving … three *tessarakosts (a Chian coin of unknown value) for each man among his seamen.
1887. Sat. Rev., 17 Dec., 818. What Mr. Gladstone would call the trichotomic, or rather the *tesseratomic, division of parties.
