| 1. | intensive questioning or rough treatment, esp. by the police, in order to get information or a confession. |
| 2. | the degree of master mason in Freemasonry. |
[thurd-di-gree] 
verb, -greed, -gree⋅ing, adjective | 1. | to subject to the third degree. |
| 2. | of or pertaining to the third degree. |
| third degree n. Mental or physical torture used to obtain information or a confession from a prisoner. |
third degree
Intensive questioning or rough treatment used to obtain information or a confession, as in The detectives gave her the third degree, or Jim gave her the third degree when she came home so late. This term comes from freemasonry, where a candidate receives the third or highest degree, that of master mason, upon passing an intensive test. Dating from the 1770s, the phrase was transferred to other kinds of interrogation in the late 1800s.