trialogue

• trialog (US)
• trilogue

Medieval Latin trialogus. By surface analysis, tri- +‎ -alogue. Note that official documents of the European Union use the spelling trilogue (perhaps influenced by the French spelling).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹaɪəlɒɡ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹaɪəˌlɔɡ/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹaɪəˌlɑɡ/

trialogue (plural trialogues)

1. (uncommon) A conversation or talk between three people.
   • 1862, Thomas Mayne Reid, The Maroon‎^[1]:

     Only for a short while was he kept waiting. The trialogue came to a close, followed by a brief interval of silence—at the end of which the canoe once more made its appearance upon the open water of the lagoon.

   • 1897, Paul Leicester Ford, The Story of an Untold Love‎^[2], New York: Dodd, Mead and Co.:

     If you knew how happy it made me that, whenever she interrupted his monopoly of you, instead of making a trialogue with them, you never failed to turn to me!

2. (European Union) An informal tripartite meeting attended by representatives of the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission.

• monologue
• dialogue
• quadralogue
• multilogue

• “trialogue”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “trialogue”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “trialogue”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.