triad

Meaning

Noun

• A grouping of three.
• A word of three syllables.
• A branch of a Chinese underground criminal society, mostly based in Hong Kong.
• on a CRT display, a group of three neighbouring phosphor dots, coloured green, red, and blue.
• A chord consisting of a root tone, the tone two degrees higher, and the tone four degrees higher in a given scale.

Origin

• From Latin triad-, stem of trias, from Ancient Greek τριάς.
• Sense 3 (“branch of a Chinese underground criminal society”) is due to the word being applied by the British authorities to underground society in Hong Kong based on the geometry of the Chinese character.