Meaning & use
thrice
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Meanings
adverbnot comparableold-fashionedliterary
Three times; on three occasions.
Grammar: Goes after or before the verb in a formal or old style: he knocked thrice.
Patterns
- do something thrice
The knight knocked thrice on the castle gate.
She has visited the island thrice this year.
The bell rang thrice before the service began.
adverbnot comparablearchaicliterary
Three times as much; greatly, used as an intensifier before an adjective.
Grammar: Appears before an adjective in poetic usage.
Patterns
- thrice blessed
He was thrice blessed with fortune.
The thrice-told story grew grander each time.
She felt thrice happy to see her friend.
Common combinations
- thrice daily
- Take the medicine thrice daily.
- thrice told
- It was a thrice told tale.
- thrice blessed
- The village considered itself thrice blessed.
- once, twice, thrice
- Once, twice, thrice he tried before succeeding.
- thrice-married
- The thrice-married author wrote about love.
Synonyms and how they differ
- three times
- Three times is the normal, everyday phrase, while thrice sounds archaic or poetic.
- triply
- Triply means in three ways or three times over and is used for intensity rather than counting.
- thrice-over
- Thrice-over means three times repeated and is rare.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: thrice or trice?
thrice vs trice
A trice is a very short moment, as in 'in a trice', and is unrelated to the idea of three times.
Practice
In a modern, everyday sentence, which phrase most naturally replaces 'thrice' in 'He called thrice'?
Choose one answer.
Three times is the modern everyday equivalent. Third is an ordinal and triple is not an adverb.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “thrice”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.