Today's word is one of those items which makes you realize how powerful the Indo-European connections are! Latin tres is our three - and you can look at this page of Indo-European reflexes to see how this word turns out in all kinds of Indo-European languages, from French trois to Czech tři and Parthian hry!
In Latin the form tres is good for masculine and feminine, and tria for neuter nouns. So you can have libri tres and epistulae tres but corpora tria.
There is a genitive plural form, trium, which is the same for all genders, and tribus, for the dative and ablative plurals in all genders.
The ordinal form is tertius, "third." There is also a distributive form for when things happen "by threes" as we would say in English: terni (compare bini for twos and singuli for things that happen one by one).
There is also an adverb ter, like English "thrice."
Here are some proverbs and sayings about the number tres:
Post tres dies piscis vilescit et hospes.
In ore duorum aut trium testium stabit omne verbum.
Tres feminae et tres anseres sunt nundinae.
Dives eram dudum; fecerunt me tria nudum: alea, vina, Venus; tribus his sum factus egenus.
Maneant in vobis fides, spes, caritas, tria haec: maior autem horum est caritas.
Multa rogare, rogata tenere, retenta docere: haec tria discipulum faciunt superare magistrum.
Rebus in humanis tria sunt dignissima laude: uxor casta, bonus socius, sincerus amicus.
E tribus optimis rebus tres pessimae oriuntur: e veritate odium, e familiaritate contemptum, e felicitate invidia.
In tria tempora vita dividitur: quod est, quod fuit et quod futurum est.
Ista tria semper mente habeas: quid fuisti? quid es? quid eris?
Esse, Fuisse, Fore, tria florida sunt sine flore; nam simul omne perit, quod fuit, est, et erit.
Ter quaterque felix qui non est debitor ulli.
Aut est aut non est, tertium non datur.
Duobus litigantibus, tertius gaudet.
Male acquisito non gaudebit tertius heres.
Primo quidem decipi incommodum est; iterum stultum, tertio turpe.
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