trice
noun
a very short time; an instant.
trice
1 American
[trahys]
/ traɪs /
noun
trice
2
American
[trahys]
/ traɪs /
verb (used with object)
Nautical.
triced,
tricing
-
to pull or haul with a rope.
-
to haul up and fasten with a rope (usually followed byup ).
-trice
3
American
trice
1
British
/ traɪs /
noun
trice
2
British
/ traɪs /
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of trice1
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English tryse; probably special use of trise (unrecorded) “a pull, tug,” derivative of trisen, “to pull”; see trice 2
Origin of trice2
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English trisen, from Middle Dutch trīsen “to hoist,” derivative of trīse “pulley”
Origin of -trice3
< French or Italian -trice < Latin -trīcem, accusative of -trīx -trix
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
On 15 July 1965, NASA’s Mariner 4 probe sent back grainy images of Mars, revealing a forbidding surface that destroyed florid Victorian speculation in a trice.
From Nature ● Jan. 7, 2019
We’d hired someone to help us sort through our belongings—keep it, sell it, give it away—Patty could get rid of anything in a trice.
From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2018
He was maybe three feet from the net, but somehow, in a trice, managed to extend his left arm sideways and tilt his racquet head down toward his thighs.
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 30, 2016
You saw the dancer, and then in a trice you heard the music; but seven years ago this aspect of Balanchine dancing had virtually slipped away.
From New York Times ● Jun. 25, 2015
In a trice they were back, moist snouts poking from the excavation.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
“Nowadays it often seems writing is nothing at all,” Duras recorded in it presciently, years before the internet made everyone a créateur or -trice.
From New York Times ● Nov. 27, 2022
“It’s the fellah that’s triced up so nately to the port rail, sor,” answered Dolan.
From Dick Leslie's Luck A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure by Harold Piffard
An’ so yeou hed a wisit frum Si an’ Ed, did yeou; an’ wall, what d’ye think o’ thet, gents, here’s yer birds all triced up, ready tew be transported to jail.
From The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol by Herbert Carter
The lancha had vanished round the stern, the ladder was triced up, and the open cargo gangway several feet above the brine.
From For Jacinta by Harold Bindloss
A sail triced up was filled with water to serve as a bath.
From Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs A Tale of Land and Sea by William Henry Giles Kingston
Eccles and I triced them up, then stowed the supper gear in the locker.
From The Brassbounder A Tale of the Sea by David W. Bone
Moran dragged the hammock back into the cabin, and, returning upon deck, helped Wilbur to cut away the last tricing tackle.
From Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris
“Good!” said I. “Then let them be brought on deck at once, and see that all is ready for tricing them up, should those boats succeed in getting dangerously near to us.”
From A Middy in Command A Tale of the Slave Squadron by Edward S. Hodgson
“I’ll rig up a whip from the foreyard and we can let down a hammock for ’em, tricing up one at a time.”
From The Ghost Ship A Mystery of the Sea by Henry Austin
He lowered the foresail, and still further reduced the mainsail by tricing up the tack.
From A Desperate Voyage by Edward Frederick Knight
Her crew were tricing up the boarding-netting, dragging round the starboard guns, knocking new portholes for them, and making every preparation for a desperate resistance.
From The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
