Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A hat having the brim turned up on three sides.
  • adjective Having three corners, horns, or projections.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having three horns or horn-like processes.
  • noun A hat with three points or horns; a cocked hat having the brim folded upward against the crown on three sides, producing three angles; hence, by popular misapplication, the hat worn by the French gendarmes, which has only two points: usually written as French, tricorne. See cut 13 under hat.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A three-sided hat with the brim turned up
  • noun mathematics A three-horned fractal
  • adjective Having three horns or similar projections

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun cocked hat with the brim turned up to form three points

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French tricorne, from Latin tricornis, three-horned : tri-, tri- + cornū, horn; see ker- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

  • The rally intends to call “the GOP back to its roots,” if by “roots,” you mean lots of people in tricorn hats, whose idea of a good time is batting around their favorite economists from the Austrian School.

    slightly smeary article about ron paul 2008

  • The rally intends to call “the GOP back to its roots,” if by “roots,” you mean lots of people in tricorn hats, whose idea of a good time is batting around their favorite economists from the Austrian School.

    07 « September « 2008 « Niqnaq 2008

  • The woman sitting next to Miss Temple, who had preceded her into the coach, wore a kind of tricorn hat rakishly pinned to her hair, and a thin band of cloth tied over her eyes, quite like a pirate.

    The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters Dahlquist, Gordon 2006

  • The woman sitting next to Miss Temple, who had preceded her into the coach, wore a kind of tricorn hat rakishly pinned to her hair, and a thin band of cloth tied over her eyes, quite like a pirate.

    The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters Dahlquist, Gordon 2006

  • Your typical pirate hat is called a "tricorn" or 3-cornered hat.

    BellaOnline - The Voice of Women 2010

  • April 26th, 2010 at 3: 35 pm tombaker says: we should chip in and get freeman a tricorn (made of organic materials, of course) so he can go get down with his teabagger soulmates, and help them “take back” america.

    Think Progress » Beck calls Bush a ‘progressive,’ says Obama is doing ‘exactly’ the same thing. 2010

  • But after years of armed struggle against New York's royal governors and sheriffs over the New Hampshire Grants, 37-year-old Ethan Allen—tall, muscular and "a commanding figure in his forest green greatcoat and sheared beaver tricorn hat"—and his Green Mountain Boys were ready to fight for independence.

    Founding Father (Of Vermont) Robert K. Landers 2011

  • I was thinking of marketing tinfoil tricorn hats for the Tea Tards.

    Think Progress » Obama bumper sticker fuels violent political road rage in Tennessee. 2010

  • Wearing his Virginia militia uniform—red coat with white lace cuffs, red vest and breeches, black boots, a black tricorn—on April 2 Washington climbed atop a tall horse and rode out at the head of a corps of men wearing cloth coats, breeches, and hunting shirts.

    George Washington’s First War David A. Clary 2011

  • Today, Glen Beck's tea people enjoy wearing tricorn hats, but does anyone doubt that they would have been Tories during the American Revolution?

    The true American patriots 2011

Comments

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  • A trifecta of unicorns

    November 16, 2007

  • “A hat with three points or horns; a cocked hat having the brim folded upward against the crown on three sides, producing three angles; hence, by popular misapplication, the hat worn by the French gendarmes, which has only two points: usually written as French, tricorne. See cut 13 under hat.”

    — from The Century Dictionary

    October 29, 2018