Etymology

trigram

T1R1I1G2R1A1M3

Today it means: A trigraph, a sequence of three letters representing one phoneme. Full definition →

Ancient Greek γράμμα (grámma) ← Proto-Hellenic *grə́pʰō ← Proto-Indo-European *gerbʰ-
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*tréyes
  2. Proto-Indo-European*tri-
  3. Proto-Italic*tri-
  4. Latintri-
  5. Englishtri-
  6. Proto-Indo-European*gerbʰ-
  7. Proto-Hellenic*grə́pʰō
  8. Ancient Greekγρᾰ́φω (grắphō)
  9. Ancient Greekγράμμα (grámma)
  10. English todaytrigram

From tri- + -gram, literally “three marks”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.