With all these dilemmas and trilemmas crowding the mind, if one did not know better, one might be tempted to doubt whether any such versions were ever made at all.
Source: wiktionary
Trilemma
//tɹaɪˈlɛmə//
Synonyms for "trilemma" (3 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
Related terms
1 entriescoordinate
3 entriesderived
4 entriesderived from
1 entriesetymologically related_to
3 entrieshas context
1 entriesrelated to
16 entriessimilar
3 entriesTranslations
22 translations across 18 languages.
Catalan
1 entries- trilema noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Chinese Mandarin
1 entries- 三难困境 noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Czech
2 entries- trilema noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
- trilema noun ((logic) argument containing three alternatives)
Dutch
1 entries- trilemma noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Esperanto
2 entries- trilemo noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
- trilemo noun ((logic) argument containing three alternatives)
French
1 entries- trilemme noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Galician
2 entries- trilema noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
- trilema noun ((logic) argument containing three alternatives)
Georgian
1 entries- ტრილემა noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
German
1 entries- Trilemma noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Greek
1 entries- τρίλημμα noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Indonesian
1 entries- trilema noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Italian
1 entries- trilemma noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Japanese
1 entries- 三すくみ noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Korean
1 entries- 트릴레마 noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Portuguese
1 entries- trilema noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Russian
2 entries- трилемма noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
- трилемма noun ((logic) argument containing three alternatives)
Spanish
1 entries- trilema noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Vietnamese
1 entries- tam nan noun (circumstance in which a choice must be made between three options)
Sample sentences
6 total sentences available.
At the most general level, policymakers in open economies face a macroeconomic trilemma: 1. to stabilize the exchange rate; 2. to enjoy free international capital mobility; 3. to engage in a monetary policy oriented toward domestic goals. Because only two out of the three objectives can be mutually consistent, policymakers must decide which one to give up.
Source: wiktionary
The UK government has forced itself into a trilemma in which it has adopted three positions, only two of which can be achieved at any one time: to avoid a hard border within the island of Ireland; for the UK as whole to leave both the customs union and the single market; and to rule out any special arrangements for Northern Ireland in relation to a customs union and single market.
Source: wiktionary
In computing, the unconquerable trilemma is embodied in the well-known CAP theorem for distributed systems, also called Brewer’s CAP theorem. This states that any distributed database can only attain two of three guarantees: consistency, availability and partition tolerance.
Source: wiktionary
Showing 4 of 6 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.