Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In ancient prosody and rhetoric, a period consisting of three cola.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The symbol
⁝ , acolon with three dots instead of two. - noun rhetoric A
sentence with three clearly defined parts of equal length, usuallyindependent clauses .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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"will [ing] nothing — want [ing] [nothing], and do [ing] nothing" (the sneer in the tricolon is almost audible).
Hegel on Buddhism 2007
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In an age when parliamentary oratory is assumed be dead or moribund at best, it is a pleasure to record that this was one of the most hotly contested awards with lively debate on the merits of all sorts of rhetorical devices from the Ciceronian tricolon to the good old cheap shot.
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The emotional height of the tricolon, where Ovid describes poetic inspiration, gives way to a comparatively prosaic distich where he explains that the conditions necessary for inspiration do not exist at
The Last Poems of Ovid 43 BC-18? Ovid
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= The use of the third person adds to the emotive power of the tricolon 'ager ... hirundo ...
The Last Poems of Ovid 43 BC-18? Ovid
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= 9-10 = form a tricolon, where each phrase represents the same action in progressively more specific terms: (1) 'dissimulas etiam' (2) 'nec me uis nosse uideri' (3) 'quisque sit audito nomine Naso rogas'.
The Last Poems of Ovid 43 BC-18? Ovid
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Nabokov’s masterly use of the adjectival tricolon is on display in Ada, when Van stares from the ocean-liner’s deck into the ‘black, foam-veined, complicated waters’ in which Lucette has drowned herself, thanks to him.
Michael Maar, By Their Epithets Shall Ye Know Them, NLR 126, November–December 2020 ‘Teddy and Tommy: The Masks of Doctor Faustus’ 2023
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