Thrice

How to spell thrice

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce thrice

What does thrice mean?

1. adverbOn three occasions; three times.

Thrice in a sentence

• The committee met thrice before reaching a decision.

• He checked the figures thrice to be certain the report was accurate.

Where does thrice come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Thrice comes from the Old English thrīwa or thrīga, meaning literally 'three times', which was built directly on thrēo, the Old English word for the number three. In Middle English this became thries, where the final -s was an old adverbial genitive ending, the same grammatical habit that gave us 'always', 'once', and 'twice'. Over time the -s sound was respelled as -ce to reflect its hissing pronunciation, which is why we write 'twice' and 'thrice' rather than 'twies' and 'thries'. The word belongs to the same small family as 'once' and 'twice', the three counting adverbs that have survived from this older system, and that shared spelling pattern is the best memory hook: if you can spell 'twice', you can spell 'thrice'. Today it reads as slightly formal or literary, since 'three times' has largely taken over in ordinary speech, but it has been in continuous English use for well over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• thri- (from Old English thrīga, three times, related to thrēo 'three')
• -s (adverbial genitive ending, later respelled -ce)