What does "three-way" mean?

Sexual activity involving three individuals.

What is a synonym for "three-way"?

Common synonyms include: ménage à trois, three-card monte, three-party, threesome, tripartite.

Three-way

adj, noun

adj, noun ·2 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Sexual activity involving three individuals.
"A guy Julian and you had a three-way with millions of years ago. I used to watch you guys screw through the keyhole sometimes."
2
A serving of Cincinnati chili with spaghetti and cheese. Cincinnati
3
Synonym of three-card monte.

Adjective

1
Relating to three different directions. attributive, not-comparable
"a three-way valve"

Adjective

1
involving three parties or elements wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

ménage à trois three-card monte three-party threesome tripartite

Example

More examples

"Yanni was nearing the three-way intersection."

Etymology

The sense referring to a serving of Cincinnati chili was coined in the 1920s by Tom and John Kiradjieff, Slavic-Macedonian immigrants to Cincinnati, for their Empress Chili chain. Doublet of trivia.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.