triple-entendre

A form of triple entendre — A phrase that has three meanings, especially where some meanings are innocent and literal, the other(s) risqué, bawdy, or ironic; an innuendo.

Meanings

nountriple-entendre (plural triple-entendres)

plural triple-entendres

  1. alternativeAlternative form of triple entendre.

    Cue handbagsful of oh-so-unfunny cross dressing jokes, triple-entendres and more screeching at Windsor Safari Park.

    1996 April 28, “Movie week with Jonathan Richards: Old gay times”, in Wales on Sunday, page 22
    3 more examples

    The melon slice, cup, and handle of the pitcher comprise a triple-entendre on the pictorial resemblance between three very different kinds of volume.

    1993, Jeffrey S. Weiss, “Georges Braque”, in Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-impressionist, and Early Modern, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf in association with Lincoln University Press, →ISBN, page 210

    A triple-entendre, if you will; 'purloined', as in out in the open and a way to change the subject title without losing the thread. The third part of the entendre was that anything is new if perspective can be shifted.

    2004 July 28, naismith, “An Open Letter To Leesa”, in alt.religion.wicca (Usenet), retrieved 05 Jun 2022

    At the same time Komunyakaa keeps the poem together, as bebop players keep their ensembles together, through momentum, through shared-yet-violated expectation (melodic shapes in bebop, line shapes here), and through the emotional unity the triple-entendres on music, sex, and clothes maintain.

    2009, Stephen Burt, “2001: Twenty-first-century free verse”, in Greil Marcus, Werner Sollors, editors, A New Literary History of America, Cambridge, Mass.; London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 1034
Cite this entry
APA

triple-entendre. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/triple-entendre

MLA

“triple-entendre.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/triple-entendre. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “triple-entendre,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/triple-entendre.

Source: triple-entendre on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.