tricolon

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek τρικωλον (trikōlon), neuter of τρικωλος (trikōlos, “having three parts”).^[1] By surface analysis, tri- +‎ colon.

tricolon (plural tricolons or tricola)

1. (rhetoric) A sentence with three clearly defined parts of equal length, usually independent clauses.

   Hypernym: isocolon

   Hyponym: hendiatris

   • 2025 December 3, Sam Kriss, “Why Does A.I. Write Like … That?”, in The New York Times Magazine‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 3 December 2025:

     By my count, that’s three tricolons in just over 100 words. It’s almost impossible to make A.I. stop saying “It’s not X, it’s Y” — unless you tell it to write a story, in which case it’ll drop the format for a more literary “No X. No Y. Just Z.”

• tricolon crescens
• tricolon diminuens

From tri- +‎ colon.

tricolon (plural tricolons)

1. The symbol ⟨⁝⟩, a colon with three dots instead of two.

• Gideon O. Burton (26 February 2007), “tricolon”, in Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric‎^[2].

• isocolon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek τρικωλον (trikōlon, “having three parts”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈtri.koːˌlɔn/
• Hyphenation: tri‧co‧lon

tricolon n (plural tricola, no diminutive)

1. tricolon