Word.ws English Dictionary

eternal triangle

eternal triangle noun: a relationship involving three persons (usually two women and one man or two men and one woman) among whom there are conflicting and competing attachments of a romantic or emotional nature.

Noun

eternal triangle (plural eternal triangles)

  1. (idiomatic) A relationship involving three persons (usually two women and one man or two men and one woman) among whom there are conflicting and competing attachments of a romantic or emotional nature.
    • "There weren't even any words," she said. "He knocked Loerke down and stunned him, he half strangled me, then he went away." To herself she was saying: "A pretty little sample of the eternal triangle!"1920, D. H. Lawrence, chapter 31, in Women in Love
    • Wives and Lovers perkily proves that the eternal triangle is still good for laughs. The triangle consists of Author Van Johnson, Wife Janet Leigh and Literary Agent Martha Hyer, who sells Van's novel to a publisher, a book club, a Broadway producer and a movie company. . . . Not content with her...1963 September 6, “Cinema: After the Money Rolled In”, in Time

Examples of eternal triangle in a sentence

  • Wives and Lovers perkily proves that the eternal triangle is still good for laughs.1963 September 6, “Cinema: After the Money Rolled In”, in Time:
  • And then there’s the eternal triangle thing with Duke fancying Olivia who fancies Sebastian.2006 April 6, Margaret Pomeranz, "She's The Man," abc.net (Australia) (retrieved 4 June 2013)

Forms of eternal triangle

pluraleternal triangles

Questions about eternal triangle

What does eternal triangle mean?
Eternal triangle means a relationship involving three persons (usually two women and one man or two men and one woman) among whom there are conflicting and competing attachments of a romantic or emotional nature.
How do you use eternal triangle in a sentence?
Wives and Lovers perkily proves that the eternal triangle is still good for laughs.
What part of speech is eternal triangle?
Eternal triangle is a noun.
What is the plural of eternal triangle?
The plural of eternal triangle is eternal triangles.

Words near eternal triangle in the dictionary

  1. eternal return
  2. Eternal September
  3. eternal sin
  4. eternal sins
  5. eternal sleep
  6. eternal triangle
  7. eternal triangles
  8. eternalisation
  9. eternalisations
  10. eternalise
  11. eternalised

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eternal triangle (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-eternal triangle.ogg.

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