triplet
/ˈtrɪplɪt
/noun
1 (usually triplets) One of three children or animals born at the same birth: she was expecting triplets the lamb was a triplet and small...
- In fact, triplets born to older mothers were actually less likely to experience poor birth outcomes than were triplets born to younger mothers.
- Six years before I was born, my mother gave birth to triplets: Felicity, Everett and Dillon.
- Nearly 10,000 multiple births were recorded last year in the UK, and one in 35 children is now born as a twin, while triplet births have quadrupled in many countries.
2A set or succession of three similar things: a triplet of aces the boxer’s jab came in triplets...
- The reason why a triplet or quad of Aces is worth so few points is because they can be very easy to get.
- It constitutes a triplet, the first number representing the position, the second the wavelength and the third the transmission.
- DNA, RNA, and protein triplets or pairs were united on the basis of a high degree of similarity as detected by the appropriate blast algorithm or on the basis of annotation.
2.1 Music A group of three equal notes to be performed in the time of two or four.In addition to quarters, eighths and sixteenth notes, triplets and dotted rhythms are used tastefully and add variety....
- Voicing in many pieces is made more advanced by placing the melody in the same hand as many moving sixteenth notes or triplets.
- The arrows indicate the beginning of the grace note figure and the placement of each note in the triplet figure for the left hand.
2.2A set of three rhyming lines of verse.That's to say, his poems build displacement into their structures: they move forward in discrete couplet and triplet units, they offer small bright pleasures and ask us to pass on quickly....
- The verses of the Irish chapbooks are all in couplets but, in using the ‘liberty’ line, a pair of couplets is transformed into a triplet plus an isolated line.
- Fifty-two of these triplets would be published in 1977 as Finding Losses.
3 Physics & Chemistry An atomic or molecular state characterized by two unpaired electrons with parallel spins.The relatively stable ground state of oxygen is a triplet state with two unpaired electrons with the same spin quantum number, each located in different antibonding orbitals....
- Such fields, however, do not wreck triplet superconductivity because the spins of both electrons may point in the same direction as the field.
- A new reaction of this dye, whereby its excited triplet state oxidizes suitable electron donors, is now reported.
3.1A group of three associated lines close together in a spectrum or electrophoretic gel.One central residue and its two selected supporting residues (one on each side) are together called a residue triplet....
- The analysis wavelength was 470 nm, near the maximum of the triplet difference spectra.
- The triplet and the quartet lines are clearly distinguished at the different spatial positions.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from triple, on the pattern of doublet.