Why is ‘twice’ frequently used, especially in marketing - “Twice as much; twice as good”, but thrice is rarely seen?
And why is there no comparable word for four times?
4 times ? fice ? well that would be confusing, because 5 times would also be fice.
Maybe it could be ‘quice’ for 4 times.
Do you want have breakfast sevice times a week ? Would “9 times” be nice ?
I tried a google search, ‘thrice’ does seem to be still in use, and no mention of a ban.
eg CNN used it recently in a 2012 an article about slavery in Mauritania.
Here’s what the company that publishes the OED and similar dictionaries says:
Please get the following straight in your head: There are no deep, rational reasons why anything does or doesn’t exist in a language. That’s not how languages work.
I use “thrice” whenever I can, and find it sad that it’s not used more often. The Commodores’ song that goes “you’re once…twice…three times a lady” has to be one of the worst excuses for music ever created.
The Urban Dictionary has a listing for “quatrice” as something that has happened/occured for the fourth time. Another source indicated the KJV had “fourice” at some point, but I can’t confirm that one. If you just want a term, quatrice or tetrice seem reasonable.
Another series where the larger numbers have fallen into obsolescence is:
ace, deuce, trey, cater, cinque, sice
I think “deuce” is in very wide use, “trey” considered quaint except by avid card-players, “cater” and up obsolete even among gamblers.
Some people still use it:
*Philia: That’s the brute who raped my country, Thrace!
Pseudolus: He raped Thrace?
Philia: And then he came and did it again! And then again!
**Pseudolus: **He raped Thrace thrice? *
-A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
No need to be rude.
The Oxford English Dictionary is published by the Oxford University Press. It has no connection, other than the name, with the company in your link.
It’s fairly frequently used by sports announcers as shorthand for a three-point shot in basketball.
I also had a classmate who was named Firstname Lastname III, and went by “Trey”.
Forsooth! One knows not why “thrice” hath fallen off the radar.
language usage changes. There are a heckuva lot more times when “two times” is called for in conversation than “3 times”. Even less for “4 times” or “24-7 times”.
There’s a rule somewhere of language analysis that says how common a word is (and possibly how old) by how simplistic it is. Thus we have “twice”, and occasionally “thrice”, but no “quice”. We have “half”, “third” and “quarter” but not “Quinter”. (IIRC Quintile might suffice). It was easy to divide stuff evenly into 2 or 4 pieces, and maybe even 3, but 5 even pieces was not as easy to do by eyeball, and much less comonly called for.
I wrote out some instructions for someone last week, and used the word thrice twice.
Now I think about it, I really missed an opportunity there, didn’t I?
Yes, and there seems to be something special about two, or about having two of something or multiplying or dividing by two as compared to other numbers:
“In medieval treatises on computation, these two processes of duplication [doubling] and mediation [halving] were considered to be separate arithmetic operations besides the usual four ones. The principle of reducing multiplication to duplication is very old; it was used by the early Egyptians, and it may well have been the first approach to a systematic multiplication procedure.”
-Oystein Ore: Number Theory and Its History
There’s a parallel here with “primary, secondary, tertiary”. The series continues with “quaternary, quinary” etc but with increasing rarity of need and therefore use.
I settle it:
Once, twice, thrice, quatrice, quintice, sextice, septice, octice, nince, tince, elevince, twilce.
And that’s it. Nothing happens more than twilce.
For technical terms, such as scientific nomenclature and mathematical series, there usually is a rationale. And the word may exist but not be used frequently enough to make it into most dictionaries, or be algorithmically correct but not yet extant.
Most people I know would state it as a regular fraction. I’ll take a fifth, or a sixth…
I match and raise:
Once, twice, thrice, quadrice, quintice, sextice, septice, octice, novice, decice, undecice, duodecice, tredecice, quattordecice, quindecice, sexdecice, septendecice, octodecice, novemdecice, vigintice
And left many an orphan, I’ve heard.
Unless you’re talking about computer programming languages; and even then…
Actually, there are often historical reasons why things are the way they are in a language. (I’m reminded of the recent GQ thread about silent letters, for example.)
Well, only in the sense that they are one and the same company. Just scroll to the bottom of the page at the link in question, and you will see.
Thrice is the only proper count to be used in timing for the holy hand grenade.
With which thee might blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy? Where the count shall be three, thrice shall be the count. One, two, and three. Thou shalt not count to four; Nor shalt thou count to two except that thou shalt then proceed to three. Five is right out.