Dictionaries › English

triad

Pronunciation: /ˈtɹaɪ.æd/

The English word “triad” has 6 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A grouping of three.
  2. A romantic or sexual relationship between three individuals; a throuple.
  3. A word of three syllables.
  4. A branch of a Chinese underground criminal society, mostly based in Hong Kong.
  5. On a CRT display, a group of three neighbouring phosphor dots, coloured green, red, and blue.
  6. A chord consisting of a root tone, the tone two degrees higher, and the tone four degrees higher in a given scale OR any chord with three notes.

Etymology

PIE word *tréyes From Latin triad-, stem of trias (“three, triad”), from Ancient Greek τριάς (triás). By surface analysis, tri- + -ad. Sense 3 (“branch of a Chinese underground criminal society”) is due to the word being applied by the British authorities to underground society in Hong Kong based on the geometry of the Chinese character, derived from a name used by some of those societies, 三合會…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “triad” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.