trillibub, a trifle, an expression for something trifling. Massinger, Old Law, iii. 2 (Simonides); Shirley, Hyde Park, iii. 2 (Fairfield); a cheap food, like tripe, B. Jonson, Barth. Fair, i. 1 (Quarlous). See Nares. Cp. the prov. words for entrails, tripe, trollibobs, trullibubs, trollibags, gen. used in phr. tripe and trollibobs (EDD., s.v. Trollibobs). See [trullibub].
trim, neat, elegant, nice, fine; mostly used with irony; ‘The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim’, Venus and Ad. 1079; ‘Trim gallants’, L. L. L. v. 2. 363; ‘These trim vanities’, Hen. VIII, i. 3. 37; ornamental dress, Ant. and Cl. iv. 4. 22; ‘Proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim’, Sonnet 98; phr. in her trim, in speaking of ships, the state of being fully prepared for sailing, ‘Where we in all her trim freshly beheld our royal ship’, Tempest, v. 236; Com. Errors, iv. 1. 90.
trim-tram, a trifle, a worthless speech or thing. Stanyhurst, tr. of Aeneid, ii. 114. [‘They thought you as great a nincompoop as your squire—trim-tram, like master, like man’, Smollett, Sir L. Greaves, xiii.] A reduplicative term used in Scotland, expressive of ridicule or contempt (EDDA.).
trindill; ‘That they take away and destroy all shrines, tables, candlesticks, trindills, or rolls of wax’, King’s Injunctions, ann. 1547, in Fuller’s Church History.
trindle-tail. Fletcher speaks of a cur with ‘a trindle tail’, i.e. a tail curled round, Love’s Cure, iii. 3. 17; Honest Man’s Fortune, v. 3. 18; spelt trundle-tail, a dog with a curled tail, King Lear, iii. 6. 73; trendle-tail, B. Jonson, Barth. Fair, ii. 1 (Ursula). See [trendle].
trine, a combination of three things (viz. youth, wit, and courage), Mirror for Mag., Cromwell, st. 26.
trine, an aspect in which one planet was at an angle of 120 degrees from another. Dryden, Annus Mirab. 292; ‘A trine aspect’, Beaumont and Fl., Bloody Brother, iv. 2 (Norbret). Hence, as vb., to conjoin in a trine, Dryden, Palamon, iii. 389. See [triplicity].
trine, to be hanged (Cant). Fletcher, Beggar’s Bush, iii. 3 (Higgen); Harman, Caveat, p. 31; trine me, hang me, Middleton, Roaring Girl, v. 1 (Trapdoor).
trinket (trinquet), the highest sail of a ship. Hakluyt, Voyages, iii. 411; ‘Trinquet is properly the top or top-gallant on any mast, the highest sail of a ship’, Blount, Gloss. (ed. 1674). F. trinquet (Cotgr.), Span. and Port. trinquete, deriv. of trinca, a rope for lashing fast; of Germ. origin, cp. G. strick; see Reinhardstöttner, Portuguese Gram. (1878), § 31, and Schade (s.v. Strickan).
trinket, a porringer; esp. one made with a handle, like a teacup, as it is to be hung upon a pin. Tusser, Husbandry, § 17. 3.