I’ve seen references lately to the use of both of these terms to mean the same thing. Jim Schollmeyer and Ted Leeson show the title to one of their more popular books as The Fly Tier’s Benchside Reference, while a popular fly tying supply company is called the Fly Tyer’s Dungeon. So which is it? Or are they both interchangeable?
Even my spell-check shows problems with tyer over tier.
Just wondering…
Kelly.
I use them interchagably, (being graphlexic and not being able to spell) it might be a British english/American english thing
Eric
According to a check of my online dictionary they are interchangeable, with the word “Tier” also meaning to have levels or rank, i.e., a 2 tier wedding cake.
So we could arrange the Tyers in tiers on some occasions.
I THINK I use “tyer”, since this would avoid confusion. Tier is its own word with a completely separate meaning, as Uncle Jesse pointed out. Plus…“tying” is the correct form of the verb “to tie” (according to the Cambridge Dictionary), so “Tyer” to denote some doing the tying seems appropriate.
Kelly,
You’re a top Tier Tyer…'nuff said.
TYER for those of us who speak the King James English
For what it’s worth, “Fly Tyer (R)” is a registered trademark by Morris Communications Company Magazines, LLC.
Definition: tier
Part of Speech Definition
Noun 1. A relative position or degree of value in a graded group.[Wordnet]
2. Any one of two or more competitors who tie one another.[Wordnet]
3. A worker who ties something.[Wordnet]
4. Something that is used for tying; “the sail is fastened to the yard with tiers”.[Wordnet]
5. One of two or more layers one atop another; “tier upon tier of huge casks”; “a three-tier wedding cake”.[Wordnet]
6. One who, or that which, ties.[Websters]
7. A row or rank, especially one of two or more rows placed one above, or higher than, another; as, a tier of seats in a theater.[Websters]
8. A chold’s apron covering the upper part of the body, and tied with tape or cord; a pinafore.[Websters]
9. Signifies an entity that ties, based on the verb tie.[Eve - graph theoretic]
Verb Base
(tie) 1. Fasten or secure with a rope, string, or cord; “They tied their victim to the chair”.[Wordnet].
2. Finish a game with an equal number of points, goals, etc.; “The teams drew a tie”.[Wordnet].
3. Limit or restrict to; “I am tied to UNIX”; “These big jets are tied to large airports”.[Wordnet].
4. Form a knot or bow in; “tie a necktie”.[Wordnet].
5. Make by tying pieces together; “The fishermen tied their flies”.[Wordnet].
6. Unite musical notes by a tie.[Wordnet].
7. Connect, fasten, or put together two or more pieces; “Can you connect the two loudspeakers?”; “Tie the ropes together”; “Link arms”.[Wordnet].
8. Perform a marriage ceremony; “The minister married us on Saturday”; “We were wed the following week”; “The couple got spliced on Hawaii”.[Wordnet].
9. Create social or emotional ties; “The grandparents want to bond with the child”.[Wordnet].
10. To fasten with a band or cord and knot; to bind.[Websters].
11. To form, as a knot, by interlacing or complicating a cord; also, to interlace, or form a knot in; as, to tie a cord to a tree; to knit; to knot.[Websters].
12. To unite firmly; to fasten; to hold.[Websters].
13. To hold or constrain by authority or moral influence, as by knotted cords; to oblige; to constrain; to restrain; to confine.[Websters].
14. To unite, as notes, by a cross line, or by a curved line, or slur, drawn over or under them.[Websters].
15. To make an equal score with, in a contest; to be even with.[Websters].
16. To make a tie; to make an equal score.[Websters].
17. Base verb from the following inflections: tying, tied, ties, tier, tiers, tyingly and tiedly.[Eve - graph theoretic]
Sources: compiled from various sources, (under license) copyright 2008. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, WordNet 3.0 Copyright ? 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
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“Tier” is a common misspelling or typo for: tied, tiger, timer, tiers, tire, tiler, trier, Tiber, Thier, tiner, tirer, titer, ticer, iter, stier, tider.
Date “Tier” was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1380. (references)
Specialty Definition: tier
Domain Definition
Noah Webster [Noun] A row; a rank; particularly when two or more rows are placed one above another; as a tier of seats in a church or theater. Thus in ships of war, the range of guns on one deck and one side of a ship, is called a tier. Those on the lower deck are called the lower tier, and those above,the middle or upper tiers. Ships with three tiers of guns are three deckers. The tiers of a cable are the ranges of fakes or windings of a cable,laid one within another when coiled. Tier, in organs, is a rank or range of pipes in the front of the instrument, or in the interior, when the compound stops have several ranks of pipes… Source: Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary.
Aerospace A depth subdivision used in the classification of Organic soils: 1- surface tier: The upper 40 cm (16 inches) of peat; 2- middle tier: The tier just below the surface tier. It is 80 cm (32 inches) thick or extends to a lithic or hydric contact. The great group classification of Organic soils is usually based on this tier; and 3- bottom tier: The tier below the middle tier. It is 40 cm (16 inches) thick or extends to a lithic or hydric contact. The subgroup classification of Organic soils is based partly on this tier. (references)
Geography Tier is geographically located in Yemen. Its features include a populated place (a city, town, village, or other agglomeration of buildings where people live and work). Its geographic coordinates are 13.372222 degrees North latitude and 44.996389 degrees East longitude. The local population generally speaks Arabic. (references)
Industry 1: A single or multiple layer of stacked timber, generally separated from adjacent layers by stickers. Source: European Union. (references)
2: In stacking timber, the alignment vertically of the pieces and/or stickers into a well-defined rank. Source: European Union. (references)
Mechanical Engineering A concentric winding is said to have one, two or more tiers, according to whether the peripheral extremities of the end windings of groups of coils at each end of the machine form one, two or more solids of revolution around the axis of the machine. Source: European Union. (references)
Occupations 1: Assembles specified number of selected garment, glove, or mitten parts into bundles for distribution to production workers: Selects parts required to make complete article according to size, style, and color, following style guides or applying knowledge of styles. Counts specified number of garment parts of same size, style, and color and ties parts into bundles by hand. Ties production ticket to bundles of parts. Stacks bundles onto handtruck according to style, size, and color. May mark parts to indicate points of assembly or openings to be cut, using chalk or pencil, or by cutting notches with scissors. May replace defective parts found while assembling bundles. May assemble completed suit ensembles, such as coat, vest, and pants. May notify cutting department of need for additional parts to replace stock shortage. (references)
2: Rolls and ties cuts of meat to form roasts: Places cut of meat on table and rolls meat into circular shape. Forces skewer threaded with twine through roll of meat at various points to hold roll in place. Knots and cuts twine. (references)
Technology One of two or more distinct levels, as of shelves in a section of library shelving, priorities for resource allocation or acquisition, payment or benefit options in a health care plan, etc. (references)
Wikipedic A Tier is a term used commonly within fighting game circles and tournaments to describe a character’s general success in tournaments and common battles of the fighting game they hail from. In some cases the general structure of the tiers for a particular game are agreed upon by the player community, with only slight variation. With other games, the tiers may be the subject of fierce debate with strongly differing viewpoints. By their nature, tiers cannot be regarded as pure fact, but ideally come about from educated opinions and thoughtful observations supported by evidence as tournament results. (references)
Wiktionary 1: [Etymology 1] One who ties (knots, etc). (references)
2: [Etymology 1] Something that ties. (references)
3: [Etymology 2] (transitive) To arrange in layers. (references)
4: [Etymology 2] (transitive) To cascade in an overlapping sequence. (references)
5: [Etymology 2] A layer or rank, especially of seats or a wedding cake. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Definition: tyer
Part of Speech Definition
Noun 1. One who ties, or unites.[Websters].
Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
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“Tyer” is a common misspelling or typo for: tyre, Tyler, Tyger, Tyrer, thyer, tyers, twyer, toyer, typer.
Date “Tyer” was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1534. (references)
Specialty Definition: tyer
Domain Definition
Noah Webster [Noun] One who ties or unites. Source: Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Specialty Expressions: tyer
Expressions Domain Definition
Warp tyer Industry Small machine placed on a loom above the sheet of warp yarns, and used to join them if they break during weaving. Source: European Union. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
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Topics by Level of Interest: tyer
Topics sorted by level of Interest Level (1=low, 600=high) Topics sorted Alphabetically Level (1=low, 600=high)
Tree tyer 10 Fly Tyer 5
Fly Tyer 5 Tree tyer 10
Source: the editor, created by/for EVE to gauge likely levels of human interest in linguistically triggered topics (compiled across various sources, such as Wikipedia and specialty expression glosses).
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Computed Synonyms: tyer
Rank
Intensity
Word
Synonyms
Synonyms of synonym
1 6.2198 tyer tier connector, joiner, bonder, attacher, linker
2 1.2095 tyer bander belter, ganger, grouper, strapper, taper
3 1.2095 tyer seizer capturer, grabber, grasper, apprehender, grappler
Source: calculated by Eve using graph theory. “Intensity” is a score indicating the number of overlapping cliques where the word pair is found (an integer before the decimal); the first digit after the decimal is the number of overlapping terminal characters up to 9; the second characters is number of leading common characters up to 9; the last two digits measure the Levenshtein distance subtracted from 100.
Okay ohiofly, but I’m still not convinced. Could you elaborate? LOL!!!
Best regards, Dave S.
Tier drives me to tears…
An English Prof of mine many years ago said close calls should always go to the use less inclined to be mistaken… Yeah, he said it that exact way, too. Tier has other meanings.
In his “Summa Theologica” St. Thomas avoids that problem by addressing such practitioners as Fly Dressers. Nietsche, Berkeley and Hume followed suit.
Bill
I prefer Tyer, Tier is the stage on a cake or block of theatre
seats.
As refers to King James, remember he was a Scotsman born.
I take my lead from Fly Tyer Magazine and assume that they know how to spell the name of their own publication. Unfortunately my Spell Checker preferred “tier” and caused me great concern about the correct spelling. 8T 
Since “tyer” has pretty much one definition, “to tie,” I would go with this one. The most used definition of “tier” is a section or level, etc. that’s how I differentiate between the two for myself. I’m less confused.
Bruce
Dave, you are too kind, but thank you. I appreciate the responses, especially ohiofly’s treatise ;). Not that I’m too confused, but I was working on a piece for a magazine and ran into the dilemma. It appears the two are used interchangeably, the jury’s still out :roll:, so I think I’ll just throw the dart…(leaning towards “tyer” though).
Thanks, everyone.
Kelly.
Tier is also the use with a different pronounciation for such things as wedding cakes “3 Tier Cake” (Tier, rhyming with Pier). The Football Stadium has 3 tiers, from which the fans can watch the two teams playing on the field.
I prefer to use the word “Dress” as in a “Blue-winged Olive May Fly”, Dressed by Steven H. McGarthwaite. May Flies is two words, Caddisfly is one word, should not use Mayfly!
Reason give to me by Chris Marshall, publiser of “The Canadian Fly Fisher” is that a Caddis goes directly from a “Pupa” to an "Adult, while a May Fly goes from “Pupa” to “Nymph” to “Adult”!
I go to my work shop to dress some fly patterns.
I dress a bare hook, turn it into a Fly Pattern. I do not tie a hook, instead I wrap the hook with thread and using the thread attach various material to the hook shank to create a fly pattern hopefully to fool the fish.
I tied my shoe laces, I tied my necktie, the game ended with the two teams tied, was out drinking last night and tied one on.
Then there is also the another word that is spelled differently but pronouced the same, and that word is “Tide”
Eskimos have 63 words that they use to describe different forms of snow! French have 12 different words for various forms of love.
I’m not too crazy about the term “dresser” as it always makes me think of hooks with little tuxedos on them (I can never get the little bow ties right), so I too struggle with “tier v. tyer.” Looking back through various things I’ve written, though, I seem to subconsciously favor “tyer”. I think it would be a matter of picking one and sticking to it throughout the article.
I usually use tyer. But sometimes I type tier. When you tie your shoes…is it tie, or tye? Good grief. That is why I go back and forth. I cannot seem to make up my mind on this either.
Interesting observation about May Fly vs. Mayfly, Steve. I did Bing searches, and came up with the correct definitions under “mayfly” (one word), but May Fly (2 words) seemed to only reference the title of an obscure movie. Perhaps popular usage has overruled correct usage on that one?