Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An agreement, as between lovers, to meet at a certain time and place.
- n. A meeting or meeting place that has been agreed on. See Synonyms at engagement.
- v. To keep a tryst.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Same as trust, in various senses.
- n. An appointment to meet; an appointed meeting: as, to keep tryst; to break tryst.
- n. An appointed place of meeting; a rendezvous.
- n. An appointed meeting for the exchange of commodities; a market: as, Falkirk tryst (a noted horse- and cattle-market held at Falkirk in Scotland).
- Same as trust, in various senses.
- To make an appointment to meet at a given time and place; engage to meet.
- To agree to meet at any particular time or place.
Wiktionary
- n. A prearranged meeting or assignation, now especially between lovers to meet at a specific place and time.
- n. obsolete A mutual agreement, a covenant.
- v. intransitive To make a tryst; to agree to meet at a place.
- v. transitive To arrange or appoint (a meeting time etc.).
- v. intransitive To keep a tryst, to meet at an agreed place and time.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete Trust.
- n. Scot. or Poetic An appointment to meet; also, an appointed place or time of meeting.
- v. obsolete To trust.
- v. Scot. To agree with to meet at a certain place; to make an appointment with.
- v. Scot. To mutually agree to meet at a certain place.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a secret rendezvous (especially between lovers)
- n. a date; usually with a member of the opposite sex
Etymologies
- From Middle English tryst, trist, a variant (due to the Old Norse verb treysta ("to make safe, secure")) of trust, trost, from Old Norse traust ("confidence, trust, security, help, shelter, safe abode"), from Proto-Germanic *traustan (“trust, shelter”), from Proto-Indo-European *deru-, *dreu-, *drū- (“to be firm, be solid”). More at trust. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English trist, from Old French triste, a waiting place (in hunting); see deru- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“New York tabloids jumped on what one called his tryst fund, and in an interview with Katie Couric, Rudy cried foul.”
“In the middle of the studio a large wooden canvas painted blue with a black lined pulp inspired tryst is lifted by three studio assistants to rest on blocks against the wall so that it's bottom can be painted.”
The Huffington Post: Jaime Rojo & Steven Harrington: Faile Tells You 'Bedtime Stories'
“Mr. Bush’s tryst is said to involve Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.”
Think Progress » Bush Fabricates Threat To Marriage, Blames ‘Activist Judges’
“Their hushed face-to-face, in which we learn their tryst was a one-nighter, is fraught with concern over Alicia.”
“Zuma insists she implicitly asked for it and called the tryst consensual.”
Andrew Belonsky: Will Jacob Zuma's South Africa Be Democracy's Shame?
“You can call their tryst and its consequences a metaphor of two generations of Germans passing guilt from one to the next, but that doesn't explain why filmmakers Daldry and Hare luxuriated in the sex scenes -- and why it's so tastefully done audiences won't see it for the child pornography it is.”
Thelma Adams: Reading Between the Lines in The Reader: When is Abuse Not Abuse?
“Our tryst was a cave where a little water called the Dyve Burn had cut its way through the cliffs to the sea.”
“Y: Moses said: "Your tryst is the Day of the Festival, and let the people be assembled when the sun is well up.”
“Padre, that the failure of the prince to keep our tryst was the biggest disappointment and the sharpest humiliation of my life.”
“To the majority of MCA's 2,300-odd delegates, Dr Chua's so-called tryst was a non-judgmental concern to begin with even as people denounce his morality.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tryst’.
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Iaan
dirigisme, dystopia, cacotopia, ex ante, veritable, indefatigable, curmudgeon, desultory, antediluvian, transmogrify, pendent, elongate and 269 more...
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 330 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
zealot, wistful, welter, wary, whimsical, warranted, vortex, vivisection, volatile, vitiate, viscous, visage and 787 more...
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EN - archaic words
abide, abjure, abroad, adamant, afield, aforetime, aghast, anon, apace, argent, assuage, aught and 328 more...
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henryar's list
marmoleum, menagerie, cyan, ochre, pilfer, discombobulate, loquacious, iridescent, amethyst, derelict, botulism, equilibrium and 240 more...
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Words For Novel (Part 2)
fable, sprite, syphilitic, anvil, wonderstruck, vertigo, bridled, tufted, fettered, savvy, tweed fedora, tryst and 255 more...
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Rexicon
brazen, insipid, cuss, penchant, salacious, titillate, lurid, schlemiel, interlope, masquerade, supercilious, action-taking and 51 more...
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favored
visceral, twinkle, whalebone, incandescent, carousel, entangle, brevity, desolate, twirl, deltoid, graceless, tryst and 94 more...
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desirAe's list
flustered, tryst, wretched, limmerance, subjective, ferment, fester, fleeting, synergy
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ICE
quincunx, adoxography, panjundrum, breloque, surd, scripturient, rousant, favrile, embouchure, aquarelle, griffonage, sussultatory and 234 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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play words
words for a play
pert, vicissitude, melancholy, vexation, gaud, attestation, renunciation, wax, wrought, sunder, antipodes, reckoning and 236 more...
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Words. Just words.
Our chief weapons are words, that's all. Just words. Only words, not justly words, that is.
That is to say that there are only words in this list, not words that are just, although s...profligacy, monty, the arc of history, luddite, peremptory, brusque, languid, callipygian, perniciously, insidiousness, camelot, perforce and 189 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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Some Words I Love to Use
arcology, strumpet, crux, confected, pedant, bluestocking, cogitation, incensed, lovecraftian, cygnet, dactyl, adytum and 539 more...
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Lolita
Words to remember from Nabokov's "Lolita"
concordance, limned, lurid, puerility, variorum, perspicacious, exigency, acrostic, solipsism, mnemosyne, involution, fatidic and 227 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tryst.
rolig I'm sure the standard pronunciation is with a short i, rhyming with "wrist" or (more to the point) "cyst". In normal English pronunciation, "y", when used as a vowel, behaves just like "i", which means that when followed by two consonantal phonemes, without a silent "e" at the end to indicate a long vowel, it is pronounced like the "i" in "hit". Also, notice that it doesn't mean an "affair" or a "fling", but only a planned meeting, a date or rendezvous. Mar 21, 2008
dgstone I use this word on a regular basis. It is used in literature, music and TV, so I am a little stunned that people don't know how its pronounced. Mar 21, 2008
arby I think it's one of those words that if you've never heard it pronounced you would think it rhymed with iced, but I believe seanahan is right that it should be pronounced to rhyme with wrist. Tricky English! Jul 8, 2007
seanahan Every source I can find says that it should rhyme with wrist. It certainly isn't common, but I wouldn't say it is rare. I've used it a number of times, of course, if you post here, you aren't a good judge of someone who uses "common" words. Jul 6, 2007
uselessness I've always pronounced it to rhyme with "iced." Well, I'm not sure that I've ever pronounced it, out loud, to anyone... it's not really a common word. But I've imagined it to rhyme with "iced," and that's why I'm part of the problem. Jul 6, 2007
reesetee Could be, jennarenn. Or maybe that club likes to foster an alternate pronunciation? Jul 6, 2007
jennarenn There's a club in DC by the name of Tryst that everybody always pronouces with a long-i sound. Could it be regional? Jul 6, 2007
reesetee That's how I've always pronounced it. Jul 6, 2007
arby But it's supposed to rhyme with wrist right? Jul 6, 2007
jennarenn That's how I've always said it, but I have trouble getting the /h/ in there. Jul 5, 2007
uselessness I think that second one is actually meant to rhyme with iced, as spoken by Zsa Zsa Gabor. Read it just as printed, and the Y should be pronounced as a long I. I think. Jul 5, 2007
jennarenn dictionary.com gives thes following pronunciations: trist, trahyst. I can't make heads or tails of the second one. Too many consonants. Jul 5, 2007
arby I used to think it rhymed with iced. Jul 5, 2007
mikepurvis Having a single-syllable word for affair is great, especially for colouring otherwise bland narratives: "The design firm spent a year courting various manufacturers, but only one was interested, and alas, managerial differences doomed their relationship to being nothing more than an unfruitful tryst." Dec 15, 2006
seanahan I like that it portrays a simple, whimsical sort of affair. Dec 11, 2006
dreamiegrl I love this word. It is so romantic, so free. It evokes suspense, passion - like a secret life of desire. I crave this word. Dec 11, 2006