trice

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“
Got a fall and broke his shoulder, so they nabbed me in a trice --

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Definitions (11)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun A very short period of time; an instant: came back in a trice.
  2. transitive verb Nautical To hoist and secure with a rope: trice a sail.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

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Examples (50)

  • These he inflated in a trice, and then rigging up a sapling over the body, he hung them upon it, so that the slightest breeze kept them in motion. —  The Hunters' Feast Conversations Around the Camp Fire
  • My knife was out in a trice, and next moment I was playing the part of the butcher You will no doubt fancy that the next thing I did was to go in search of something to make a fire for the purpose of cooking my breakfast. —  The War Trail The Hunt of the Wild Horse
  • We've opened a new business here; we turn old folks into young ones Out of her carriage jumped the lady in a trice, and ran into the smithy What's that you're bragging about? —  Russian Fairy Tales A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore
  • The marriage of the maiden all forlorn with the Squire is on the point of being completed, when Venus (one of whose doves had been preserved by Jack) dispatches Cupid to the assistance of the despairing lovers, by the magic of whose powerful wand the usual Pantomimic changes are effected in a trice--Jack becomes Harlequin; Rosebud, Columbine; Gaffer, Pantaloon; the Squire, the Lover; and the Priest, the Clown. —  A History of Pantomime
  • Pyrrhus climbed the tree in a trice, and began to shake down the pears, and while he did so:--"Fie! —  The Decameron, Volume II
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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. From Middle English (at a) trise, at one pull, from trisen, to hoist, from Middle Dutch trīsen, from trīse, pulley. V., from Middle English trisen.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. from Middle English *tris, spelled tryse, tryys, and, with excrescent t, tryyste; cf. Swedish trissa, a pulley, truckle (triss, a spritsail-brace), =Norwegian triss (also diminutive trissel), a pulley, =Danish tridse, a pulley; cf. Low German trissel, whirling, dizziness; perhaps, with formative -s, and assimilation of consonants (trinds- later triss-), from the root *trind of trend, trendle, trindle, trundle, turn: see trend.
  2. Formerly also trise; from Middle English trisen, trycen, from MLG, trissen, Low German trissen, tryssen, also drisen, drysen, wind up, trice, later G. trissen, trice the spritsail, =Danish tridse, haul by means of a pulley: see trice, n.
  3. from Middle English tryse (in the phrase at a tryse); later also in the phrases at, with, on, or in a trice; apparently literally ‘a pull, jerk,’ i. e. a single quick motion, from trice, v. The later form of the phrase in a trice looks like an adaptation of the like-meaning Spanish phrase en un tris, in a trice (cf. venir en un tris, come in an instant; estar en un tris, be on the verge; Portuguese en hum triz, in a trice, estar por hum triz, be within a hair's breadth), literally ‘in a crack’ (a phrase used in Scotch), from Spanish tris (=Portuguese triz), a crack, crash, noise made by the breaking of glass or other brittle things, hence an instant, short time, a trice. According to Stevens (1706), Spanish tris is “a barbarous fram'd word signifying nothing of it self but as they make it; thus, venir en un tris, to come in a trice, no less barbarous in English”; prob., as the redupl. tristras, a clattering noise, indicates, an orig, imitative word, like trictrac. It is not clear that the Spanish phrase has orig, any connection with the English phrase.
 

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