Trigrams

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A set of three consecutive elements or units that can denote letters, words, or sounds in various contexts and is often used in linguistics and data analysis
2. Groups of three sequential components that are utilized in the fields of text analysis and machine learning to identify patterns or frequencies
3. Collections of three linked units, which may represent letters or words, commonly applied in computational linguistics and natural language processing

Etymology: "Trigrams" is the plural of "trigram," a compound built from "tri-," meaning three, and "-gram," from Ancient Greek "gramma," a mark or letter. Literally, a trigram is a set of "three marks." The Greek "gramma" came from the verb "graphein," to write, which is also the root of "graph" and "-graphy." So the word's core idea is simply writing or marking, reduced to three symbols. In text analysis and machine learning, a trigram is any run of three consecutive units, such as three words or three characters, taken from a body of text. Counting how often these sequences occur helps software predict likely continuations, detect authorship, or spot spelling errors. The method treats language as a chain in which each short stretch of symbols carries clues about what comes next.

Synonyms: three-grams