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Triad

//ˈtɹaɪ.æd// noun

Definitions

Noun

1
A grouping of three.
"Later artworks showed many animals and gods, some of which were clearly identified with heavenly body. They often included the symbolic triad of Sun, Moon, and Venus."
2
a three-note major or minor chord; a note and its third and fifth tones wordnet
3
A word of three syllables.
"In his general deportment he was pompous and important, affecting a species of florid elocution, which often became ridiculous from his misarranging the triads and quaternions with which he loaded his sentences."
4
three people considered as a unit wordnet
5
A branch of a Chinese underground criminal society, mostly based in Hong Kong.
"The point — and the symbolism — was that so long as the informer kept his mouth shut he was alive. Harry had seen the result of zjuk carried out by the Tapei Triad on a poor jerk they found in a back street of Tan-shui. They had used broad nail heads that didn’t make such big holes on their way in. When the paramedics came and pulled the brick off the dead man, the face came with it."

Show 4 more definitions

6
a set of three similar things considered as a unit wordnet
7
On a CRT display, a group of three neighbouring phosphor dots, coloured green, red, and blue.
8
the cardinal number that is the sum of one and one and one wordnet
9
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 /三合会 (sānhéhuì, “Three Harmonies Society”), referring to the union between heaven, earth, and humanity.

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