threefoil

plural threefoils

1. alternativeAlternative form of trefoil.

   Before mentioning Solomon's knot, the narrator had said that '[e]ven the simplest pedigree knot, the threefoil, with its three roughly symmetrical lobes, has mathematical as well as artistic beauty' (WB 87). The threefoil or Borromean knot, consisting of three interlaced rings, [...]

   2013 July 19, Susana Onega, Jeanette Winterson, Manchester University Press, →ISBN

   1 more example

   The threefoil sign is an ancient symbol for holiness and divinity. See [image of a blob with three nodes] in Group 26. The threefoil cross [image of a cross trefly, i.e. whose ends terminate in blobs of three nodes] is also known as the cross of Lazarus[.] It was adopted in the Christian symbolism and given a Christian meaning. For the history of the concept of the Holy Trinity, look up [image of Borromean rings] in Group 25.

   1995, Carl G. Liungman, Thought Signs: The Semiotics of Symbols-- Western Non-pictorial Ideograms, IOS Press, →ISBN, page 363