Word.ws English Dictionary

3-on-the-tree

3-on-the-tree is the alternative spelling of three-on-the-tree.

Meaning of three-on-the-tree

Noun

three-on-the-tree (plural three-on-the-trees)

  1. (US, idiomatic) On an automobile (especially those produced from 1939 through the mid-1970s), a three-speed manual transmission whose gearshift lever is a column shifter (mounted on the steering column) (R-N-1-2-3).
    • In driver's education, they used to teach students to drive in cars with a three-on-the-tree, but now the cars all have automatic transmissions.
    1. (US, idiomatic, metonymically) A vehicle with such a transmission.

Questions about 3-on-the-tree

What is 3-on-the-tree the alternative spelling of?
3-on-the-tree is the alternative spelling of three-on-the-tree.

Words near 3-on-the-tree in the dictionary

  1. 3-Lisp
  2. 3-M syndrome
  3. 3-MBT
  4. 3-omino
  5. 3-ominos
  6. 3-on-the-tree
  7. 3-peat
  8. 3-peated
  9. 3-peating
  10. 3-peats
  11. 3-phosphoglyceric acid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 3-on-the-tree (page history and authors); three-on-the-tree (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-3-on-the-tree.ogg.

Cite this entry: “3-on-the-tree.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/3-on-the-tree. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.