Definition and Examples of Tricolons in Rhetoric

Tricolon is a  rhetorical term for a series of three parallel words, phrases, or clauses. Plural: tricolons or tricola. Adjective: tricolonic. Also known as a  triadic sentence. For example, this tricolonic advice for  speakers  is generally credited to  President Franklin D. Roosevelt: Be sincere, be brief, be seated.Its the sense of completeness, says  Mark Forsyth, that makes the tricolon perfectly suited to grand rhetoric (The Elements of Eloquence, 2013). Tricolon comes from the Greek, three unit. Examples and Observations Dorothy ParkerI require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.Robert Maynard HutchinsThe whole apparatus of football, fraternities, and fun is a means by which education is made palatable to those who have no business in it.The Wizard From The Wizard of OzYou are talking to a man who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe.President Dwight EisenhowerEvery gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.President Barack ObamaLet us search for his largeness of spirit somewhere inside of ourselves. And when the night grows dark, when injustice weighs heavy on our hearts, when our best-laid plans seem beyond our reach, let us think of Madiba and the wo rds that brought him comfort within the four walls of his cell: It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll. / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul.Benjamin FranklinTell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.Edna St. Vincent MillayDown, down, down into the darkness of the graveGently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.Eric BentleyOurs is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas.E.B. WhiteIn the still air, under the hard sun, gleamed the flags and the banners and the drum majorettes knees.Annie DillardShe loved Maytree, his restlessness, his asceticism, his, especially, abdomen.Holling VincoeurWhat a time we had: splashed through bogs, ate like hogs, slept like logs.Herman From The SimpsonsThe key t o Springfield has always been Elm Street. The Greeks knew it. The Carthaginians knew it. Now you know it.Quentin CrispIf you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.John le CarreThey liked his diffidence when he apologized for the company he kept, his insincerity when he defended the vagaries of his subordinates, his flexibilities when formulating new commitments.Jack Sparrow From The Pirates of the CaribbeanI think weve all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically.Edmund CrispinThey chattered with stoic resignation about the state of the war, the quality of the beer, and the minor inconveniences of being alive.Carol Smith[I]n some unknown sequence, she put out the Do Not Disturb sign, applied pink Està ©e Lauder lipstick and combed her short auburn hai r. She wrote a note on hotel stationery, opened her Bible to the 23rd Psalm and mixed some cyanide into a glass of Metamucil.Then she drank it. Tricolons in the Gettysburg Address Gilbert HighetTricolon means a unit made up of three parts. The third part in a tricolon used in oratory is usually more emphatic and conclusive than the others. This is the chief device used in Lincolns Gettysburg Address, and is doubled at its conclusion:But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground.[W]e here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.Although Lincoln himself knew no Cicero, he had learnt this and other beauties of Ciceronian style from studying the prose of the baroque age. The Tricolonic Joke Alan Partington[I]n the tricolon joke, the narrative is repeated so that it becomes a script or acquired information, and this repetition sets up expectations about the series, the model being followed. The third part of the tricolon is then employed to upset these expectations in some way. Here is [a] tricolon joke: There are three Irishmen stranded on an island. Suddenly a fairy appears and offers to grant each one of them one wish. The first one asks to be intelligent. Instantly, he is turned into a Scotsman and he swims off the island. The next one asks to be even more intelligent than the previous one. So, instantly, he is turned into a Welshman. He builds a boat and sails off the island. The third Irishman asks to become even more intelligent than the previous two. The fairy turns him into a woman, and she walks across the bridge. The joke begins with a mix of three joke-scripts: the DESERT ISLAND, the GODMOTHER-THREE WISHES and the ENGLISHMAN, IRISHMAN AND SCOTSMAN. A script i s built up within the world of the joke of HOW TO GET OFF THE ISLAND. The script expectations are doubly defeated in the third section of the tricolon. Not only is no intelligence required to leave the island, the intelligent third member of the trio, instead of being the expected Englishman (in the English version of the joke, of course), is a woman, and the joke is partly on the listener, especially if male and English.