Huh? II

[Laurence Horn]

>  >From today's NYT Letters to the Editor:
>
>",,, _in a thrice_ ..."
>
>Perhaps merely a lapsus calami?
>
>-Wilson

Lovely.  There are quite a number of other such hits on the web,
although they have to be teased apart from perfectly standard uses
like "in a thrice-told tale,..."   But it's a lovely reworking of
"trice", and if you can't get something done in a thrice, you can at
least try to get it done in a twice.

LH

P.S.  One hit is "in a trice, nay in a thrice", which suggests a
degree of (self-)consciousness about the transgressive nature of this
construction.

>--
>All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
>come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>-----
>                                               -Sam'l Clemens
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org