not new, but new to me: _Trivalry_

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:36 PM -0400 6/5/11, victor steinbok wrote:
>Lendl (1978-94), McEnroe (1978-92) and Connors (1972-96),

I see that my term *motivating* was perniciously ambiguous.  They (or
maybe US/USSR/China, or various golfing triads, or poets, or
automakers back in the Big Three era, or whatever) may have provided
sufficient motivation for the term of 'trivalry' to apply to them,
but apparently not sufficient for the term to have been actually
coined.  Wonder if Garson's 2001 NFL example (ah, remember the NFL?)
was the first.  Sports contexts do seem the most likely, somehow.

LH

>  although Borg
>(1973-83), Wilander (1980-96) and others also contributed at one point or
>another. But these three battled each other competitively the longest.
>
>VS-)
>
>On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 4:10 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
>
>>
>>  Mary Carillo, NBC commentator for the tennis grand slams, is fond of
>>  referring to the current situation in tennis as a _trivalry_, what
>>  with Novak Djokovic challenging Rafael Nadal for supremacy, but Roger
>>  Federer--the "old man" at 29--still hanging on, just having defeated
>>  Djokovic in the French Open semis before losing a tough match with
>>  Nadal in today's final.  No doubt there have been earlier trivalries
>>  that motivated the same term, but I don't know how far back it goes.
>>
>>  LH
>
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