[Ads-l] throuple

[Ben Zimmer]

Yes, "throuple" has come up here a couple few times before -- most recently
last year, when Daphne Preston-Kendal shared the 1994 example (from Bitnet,
not Usenet, as the Dictionary.com slang entry has it).

 https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2022-May/161471.html

On Mon, Oct 23, 2023 at 11:27 AM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Old (tricorner) hat.  It’s been around from way back in the last century,
> although it didn’t go mainstream—to the extent it has—for another 20 years.
> Seems like it’s closer to ménage à trois than to threesome, and I won’t
> touch “threelationship”.  This is from dictionary.com’s take:
>
> Evidence for _throuple_ comes as early as 1994 in an internet Usenet
> discussion of non-traditional relationships. _Throuple_ saw a smattering of
> uses online in the 2000s, but it was in 2014 that Stephen Colbert
> popularized the term on his TV show _The Colbert Report_ in a story on a
> lesbian throuple's wedding.
>
> https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/throuple/
>
> LH
>
> > On Oct 23, 2023, at 11:16 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > "We're a gay throuple who've spent over $170,000 on surrogacy and
> adoption
> > — there are a lot of hidden costs, and it's more expensive than you
> think"
> >
> > https://www.yahoo.com/news/were-gay-throuple-whove-spent-005905833.html
> >
>

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