Word.ws English Dictionary

tris-

tris- prefix: a variant of tri- used to indicate that the component that does not take the prefix occurs three times in the compound: trisphosphuret of copper is PCu₃; trisbenzeneazoresorcinol, C₆H(OH)₂(N₂Ph)₃.

Prefix

tris-

  1. (obsolete) A variant of tri- used to indicate that the component that does not take the prefix occurs three times in the compound: trisphosphuret of copper is PCu₃; trisbenzeneazoresorcinol, C₆H(OH)₂(N₂Ph)₃.
  2. A variant of tri-, used for substitutions of three complex rather than simple units, as in,
    • trisbenzene-azophenol, C₆H₂(N:NC₆H₅)₃OH
    • tristhio-dimethyl-benzaldehyde, {C₆H₃(CH₃)₂CHS}₃

Origin of tris-

Borrowed from Ancient Greek τρῐ́ς (trĭ́s, “thrice”).

Questions about tris-

What does tris- mean?
Tris- means a variant of tri- used to indicate that the component that does not take the prefix occurs three times in the compound: trisphosphuret of copper is PCu₃; trisbenzeneazoresorcinol, C₆H(OH)₂(N₂Ph)₃.
What part of speech is tris-?
Tris- is a prefix.

Words near tris- in the dictionary

  1. trirotors
  2. trirubidium
  3. tris
  4. tris legomena
  5. tris legomenon
  6. tris-
  7. trisaccate
  8. trisaccharide
  9. trisaccharides
  10. Trisagia
  11. trisagion

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tris- (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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Cite this entry: “tris-.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tris-. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.