- 1「一瞬間、一下子」——只用在 in a trice 這個固定說法裡，語感偏舊、偏書面，接近中文的「霎時」「一轉眼」。日常口語台灣學生要說快，用 in a second 就好。
'Trice' has almost no life outside one phrase: 'in a trice', meaning in an instant, very fast. You will not hear anyone say 'a trice' by itself, and there is no plural in real use — the word survives only inside that phrase, the way 'kilter' survives only in 'out of kilter'. In a trice she had the whole thing packed. The flavour is old-fashioned and slightly ; it belongs to storytelling and to older novels, and when a modern speaker uses it, it is often with a small wink. In everyday Taiwan classrooms you would say 'in a second', 'in no time', 'straight away'. There is also a rare sailor's verb 'to trice', meaning to haul something up with a rope and tie it off, but you can safely leave that in the ships where it lives.
組成From Middle English trīcen, 'to pull or jerk', borrowed from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German words meaning 'to hoist with a pulley'. The phrase began as 'at a trice' — with one single pull. So the picture is one sharp tug of a rope: one movement, and it is done.
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Tricename
- 1
A surname.
triceverb詞源 1/tɹaɪs/
- 1
obsoleteTo pull, to pull out or away, to pull sharply.
- The tent is made of light, close, unbleached duck, […] A window, six inches square, is fitted at the upper end with a flap to trice up or haul down.
- 2
To drag or haul, especially with a rope; specifically (nautical) to haul or hoist and tie up by means of a rope.
- ... the fold of his double chin hung like a bag triced up close under the hinge of his jaw.
- One of the two men landed had shot and wounded the mate, and the other, known as "Doublin Jack," had knocked the second mate down with a handspike. Captain Low put both these men in irons, triced them up in the mizzen rigging, and gave them each four dozen lashes of ratline stuff, which they had well earned.
tricenoun詞源 2/tɹaɪs/
- 1
Now only in the phrase in a trice: a very short time; the blink of an eye, an instant, a moment.
- Miſtruſtfully he truſteth, and he dreadingly did dare, / And fortie paſſions in a trice in him conſort and ſquare.
- This is most ſtrange, that ſhe, who even but now / Was your beſt object, the argument of your praiſe, / Balme of your age, moſt beſt, moſt deereſt, / Should in this trice of time commit a thing / So monſtrous, to diſmantell ſo many foulds of fauour, […]
tricenoun詞源 3/tɹaɪs/
- 1
obsoleterareA pulley, a windlass (“form of winch for lifting heavy weights, comprising a cable or rope wound around a cylinder”).
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。