Thursday 27 February 2014

A Trice

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

It is impossible to be too vigilant in researching every detail of Poul Anderson's vast vocabulary:

"He could cruise for a long piece of lifespan if need be, seeking the trice which would be his." (p. 126)

I skipped over "...trice...", thinking vaguely that it must be some term in a card game - three winning cards or something of that sort. However, having googled no less than four words for the previous post, I returned to "trice" and found that it was a word that I already knew but had never seen used in quite that way before.

It means an instant or very short period of time, as in phrases like "He came back in a trice." So it has no connection with the number three. But I had only ever seen the phrase "in a trice," not the word "trice" used as a separate noun. This use of the word is particularly appropriate for a time travel story. There may only be a "trice" in which Tom is able to save Feliz's life (see previous posts on "Gibraltar Falls") but Tom can afford to spend a lot of his own personal time going back and forth in time looking for that almost instantaneous opportunity.

It seems that "to trice" is a transitive verb, meaning "to hoist and secure with a rope." Thus, "trice" as a noun might mean "at one tug." As I say, we can learn a lot merely by looking up the meanings of words used by Anderson.

1 comment:

Jim Baerg said...

I don't see an explanation for 'trice' as a very short time, but I wonder.
1/60th of an hour is a minute from 'pars minuta prima',
1/60th of a minute is a second from 'pars minuta secunda'
could 'trice' come from a contraction of 'pars minuta tertia' ?

This
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minute
sort of supports my notion with its mention of the Polish & Turkish words for 1/60th of a second.