''trice'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''trice'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260305143651-00-⌔

trice - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

trice (third-person singular simple present trices, present participle tricing, simple past and past participle triced)

• (transitive, obsolete) To pull, to pull out or away, to pull sharply.
  • ✤ The tent is made of light, close, unbleached duck, […] A window, six inches square, is fitted at the upper end with a flap to trice up or haul down.¹
• (transitive) To drag or haul, especially with a rope; specifically (nautical) to haul or hoist and tie up by means of a rope.
  • ✤ … the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw.²
  • ✤ One of the two men landed had shot and wounded the mate, and the other, known as “Doublin Jack,” had knocked the second mate down with a handspike. Captain Low put both these men in irons, triced them up in the mizzen rigging, and gave them each four dozen lashes of ratline stuff, which they had well earned.³

Noun

trice (plural trices)

• Now only in the phrase in a trice: a very short time; the blink of an eye, an instant, a moment.
  • ✤ Synonyms: instant, jiffy; see also Thesaurus: moment
  • ✤ Miſtruſtfully he truſteth, and he dreadingly did dare,/And fortie paſſions in a trice in him conſort and ſquare.⁴
  • ✤ This is most ſtrange, that ſhe, who even but now/Was your beſt object, the argument of your praiſe,/Balme of your age, moſt beſt, moſt deereſt,/Should in this trice of time commit a thing/So monſtrous, to diſmantell ſo many foulds of fauour, […]⁵
  • ✤ He saw a Turnkey in a trice/Unfetter a troublesome blade;⁶
  • ✤ Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;/It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”/And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;/Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”⁷
  • ✤ And in a trice he has clambered onto the kitchen dresser and is reaching for the top shelf.⁸
  • ✤ Perhaps images then, not words? Of terrified young people who in a trice went from dancing to frantic running in a futile attempt to escape the spray of bullets; […]⁹

Noun

trice (plural trices)

• (obsolete, rare) A pulley, a windlass (“form of winch for lifting heavy weights, comprising a cable or rope wound around a cylinder”).

Pronunciation

• IPA: /tɹaɪs/
• Rhymes: -aɪs
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Etymology 1

From Middle English trīcen, trice, trise (“to pull or push; to snatch away; to steal”), from Middle Dutch trīsen (“to hoist”)¹⁰ (modern Dutch trijsen) or Middle Low German trissen (“to trice the spritsail”); further etymology uncertain. The word is cognate with Danish trisse, tridse (“to haul with a pulley”), Low German trissen, tryssen, drisen, drysen (“to wind up, trice”), German trissen, triezen (“to annoy or torment”).¹¹

Etymology 2

From Middle English trīce, trise, in the phrase at a trīce (“with a single, quick motion; at once”, literally “with a pull or jerk”), later also in the phrases in a trice, on a trice, and with a trice. The word is ultimately from Middle English trīcen: see etymology 1 above.¹²

Etymology 3

From Middle English trīce, tryys, tryyst, from Middle Dutch trīse, trijs (modern Dutch trijs (“hoisting-block, pulley, windlass”)) or Middle Low German trīsse, trītse (“hoisting-rope, tackle”);¹³ probably related to the verb trice (see etymology 1 above), and perhaps to Old English tryndel (“roller, wheel”) (see further at trend, trindle). The English word is cognate with Danish tridse, trisse (“pulley”), Low German trissel (“dizziness; whirling”), German trieze (“crane; pulley”), Norwegian triss (“pulley”), Swedish trissa (“pulley, truckle”).¹⁴

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. 1875 August, Clements R[obert] Markham, “Arctic Ice-travels”, in E[dward] L[ivingston] Youmans, editor, The Popular Science Monthly, volume VII, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton and Company, […], →OCLC, page 479: ↩

2. 1900, Joseph Conrad, chapter 3, in Lord Jim: ↩

3. 1911, Arthur H[amilton] Clark, “California Clippers of 1852—The ‘Sovereign of the Seas’”, in The Clipper Ship Era: An Epitome of Famous American and British Clipper Ships, Their Owners, Builders, Commanders, and Crews 1843–1869, New York, N.Y.; London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons […], →OCLC, page 215: ↩

4. 1586, William Warner, “The Fourth Booke. Chapter XXXIII.”, in Albions England. Or Historicall Map of the Same Island: […], London: […] George Robinson [and R. Ward] for Thomas Cadman, […], →OCLC, page 162: ↩

5. c. 1603–1606 (date written), [William Shakespeare], * […] His True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. […]* (First Quarto), London: […] Nathaniel Butter, […], published 1608, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]: ↩

6. 1834 [1799], Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, “The Devil’s Thoughts”, in The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, volume II, London: W. Pickering, page 85: ↩

7. 1907, Robert W[illiam] Service, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, in The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses, New York, N.Y.: Barse & Hopkins, publishers, →OCLC, page 53: ↩

8. 2013, J[ohn] M[axwell] Coetzee, chapter 22, in The Childhood of Jesus, Melbourne, Vic.: The Text Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 220: ↩

9. 2023 October 14, Simon Schama, “Let us be, to grieve, rage, weep; say the mourners’ kaddish”, in FT Weekend, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 9: ↩

10. “trīcen, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 26 August 2018. ↩

11. “trice, v.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914. ↩

12. “trīce, n. (2)”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 26 August 2018; “trice, n.${}^2$”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914. ↩

13. “trīce, n. (1)”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 26 August 2018. ↩

14. Compare “trice, n.${}^1$”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914. ↩

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