Trikolon

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A rhetorical device made of three parallel clauses or phrases of similar length and structure, used for emphasis
2. A figure of speech in which three corresponding words, phrases or clauses are arranged in a rhythmic sequence to add force
3. A stylistic series of three balanced expressions, such as veni, vidi, vici, grouped together for rhetorical effect

Etymology: Trikolon is a rhetorical term for a series of three parallel clauses or phrases of roughly equal length, as in Julius Caesar's "veni, vidi, vici." It comes from Greek "trikolon," literally "three members" or "three limbs," formed from "tri-" (three) and "kolon" (a clause or limb of a sentence, from the same word that gave us "colon," the punctuation mark). The Greek sense of "kolon" as a limb of a sentence is the root of the punctuation mark too: ancient writers marked off phrases of a sentence, and the mark came to be named after them. The term was used by ancient Greek and Roman rhetoricians, who analysed speech into its parts and gave names to the patterns they found. Because the Greek word was taken over into Latin and then into English as a technical term, it has kept its classical structure. English writers and critics adopted it when discussing classical rhetoric, and it remains mainly a term of literary and rhetorical analysis.