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Thanks, bilby! Hadn't heard of it, but it seems popular enough.

hatch, match and dispatch

No, the dyadic nature of Calvin and Hobbes is too strong. They're on the Couples & Duos list.

Calvin & Hobbes + Suzie?

And then two in ten minutes! (Affixes, prefixes, suffixes inspired by SoSheShall).

Thanks, xundra! It's been a long time since a new triad surfaced.

Hm, "Me, Myself, and Irene"?

How about a triple bill?

Practice, practice, practice!

Good one Asativum! Actually, its the announcement that the game of tag is over and you can come to home base free from fear of being tagged.

Thanks, dontcry! I added "you complete me" to Triads 3. Not sure about "Ollie ollie, in-come-free". The commonest form is "Olly, Olly oxen free", which isn't triadic.

don'tcry, is that some kind of Reagan-era tax protest chant?

Ollie ollie, in-come-free.

You complete me.

Ah, I must have forgotten to click 'view all' before I searched. Raincheck on the catering arrangements :-)

Thanks, rolig!

The meals are already listed bilby, but I'll take up your offer next time I'm in Oz. :-)

And then there's:

"I feel pretty, oh so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and gay!"

The original name of Yugoslavia was triadic: The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. And back in the nineties, the news was dominated by Bosnia's Serbs, Croats, and Muslims.

How about I treat you to breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Thanks, bilby! I'm still on the alert for them, but only finding one or two a month now.

Still a fantastic list, molly. I'm glad I came back to admire it again.

Ah. The families that Wordie together.... :-)

Hi bpm, red, white and blue is already on the list. And assuming you mean Dad in the literal sense, I'm also a Wordie dad. My daughter has a Wordie account.

oops, oops, oops! I thought this list was gangerh's!

Hi Dad

'See I thought of a few
How about(Red White and Blue)?
I think you ought to know
About (Row, Row, Row)

Zx

cleanse, tone, moisturise?

mollusque: There is the Spanish version of 'Tom, Dick, and Harry' --- fulano, mengano y zutano. I believe that in some Latin American countries, substitutions are possible for 'zutano' (e.g. 'perengano'). But fulano, mengano y zutano is the most common expression used.

Thanks, Treeseed! I was sure I'd listed the magi, but at least I got their gifts.

Thanks, Gangerh, quite a harvest! I took up, down, turn around, England, Scotland and Wales, ning, nang, nong and jibber, jabber, joo (the latter two for Triads 2).

I passed on Jabber, jabber, jabber which isn't as common as blah blah bah and yada, yada, yada; likewise for bread, butter, jam and tea, milk, sugar versus bread and butter and coffee, tea or milk.

The three Wisemen of The Nativity story
Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar

Wham, Bam, Thank you, Ma'am

Maiden, Mother, Crone
Aspects of the Triple Goddess in Wicca

Thanks, Misterpolly! I have on your mark, get set, go, but not ready, steady, go, which I'd assumed was the same thing, but apparently isn't. Is ready, steady, go mainly British? It get almost a million Google hits, more than ready, set, go, which is more familiar in the US.

bread,butter,jam

tea, milk,sugar?

'ning nang nong'

Delightfully silly Spike Milligan poem.

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the cows go bong
..........................
...................
..................
And the teapots jibber jabber joo.......

Oh! Could that be one 'jibber jabber, joo'?

And as my Dad used to say when someone just kept on talking

'jabber,jabber,jabber'

'england,scotland,wales'

Yes, I know there's Northern Ireland but it is separate from Great Britain which is comprised of these three. If you add NI you get The UK of GB and NI. If you add Eire, Isle of Man etc you get the British Isles.

woo, woo, www
(bum titty, bum titty,bum bum bum)

could use a better, more rounded w.

up, down, turnaround
(pick a bale of cotton)

Have you got "Tom, Dick and Harry"?
In Italy they are "Tizio,Caio and Sempronio".
"Ready, steady, go!"
"The good, the bad and the ugly."

mani-pedi-botox

Splendid list! I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

As an ex Porta Sole boy I'll have to speak up for Inferno, Purgatory & Paradise.

Then Triads 2 is the list for you.

Unfortunately I'm very partial to doggerel such as hickory dickory dock.

Sorry, sionnach! Somehow I overlooked your contribution until now.

hands, knees, and bumps-a-daisy?

Thanks, John. A nice juxtaposition with bilby's "reduce, reuse, recycle", which I just caught up with.

How about David Letterman's old saw, "Volume, Volume, Volume!"

Dang, for some reason my in-page search thing won't/can't see liberté etc.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. I think the first term refers to the theory of the use of clichés in journalism, the last two to the reality.

Thanks, John! Vera, Chuck and Dave are in. See wynken, blynken and nod for winkin et al. "Always be closing" doesn't fit the list, but I keep finding such ("fire when ready", "make my day"). Maybe I'll have to "bite the bullet" and start Triads 3.

vera, chuck, and dave? Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod? Always Be Closing?

Ok, maybe that last one's a stretch.

I thought that there were only 3 Teletubbies but turns out there are 4! Serves me right for accumulating girlfriends with weird names and extendable tummies.

That's part of the same Jackson 5 song. But, I'll take it--the phrase is older than the song.

I was thinking of "easy as one, two, three," maybe...

I've wrestled with "one, two, three", uselessness. The problem is that there's no inherent reason to stop at three. I got around that by listing do, re, mi, abc, 123, from the Jackson 5 song, and "first, second, third", which don't end in "-th" like most other ordinal numbers.

I know, I'm way overthinking it. Anyone have a good excuse to list "one, two, three"?

Okay, I'm going to be really lame, but shouldn't one, two, three be on this list?

Thanks c_b! Triads now spring out of the woodwork at me. "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" came from the comic-strip Pickles on Thursday. It was the perfect transition from "gobble, gobble, gobble" to the holiday season. Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer had the headline, "They came, they saw, they shopped", about Black Friday. That didn't make the list, but still fun.

Thanks for noticing, mollusque, that yanking my chain is indeed an abomination. :)

I still love this list. And I love how fast and marvellously it's been growing!

Hi Bilby, "virtue, liberty and independence" is the state motto of Pennsylvania; "liberté, egalité and fraternité" is on the second (older) page of the list.

I notice you have virtue, liberty and independence but liberte, egalite, fraternite is not quite the same (anyone whose school French is as bad as mine, please throw your three-cornered hat into the air now) and is certainly of some historical import.

Oops, not the tinned spaghetti kind. We don't have bears in Australia so the first time I saw one was in an enclosure of honey bears in a zoo in Sumatra. The sign "kasihanlah beruang ini" (be kind to the bears) was badly translated as "take pity on the bears". Then again I could well take pity on bears chained around the neck to iron stakes with brats chucking peanuts at them. Does that count as baiting? It wasn't me.

Thanks for the bears, Bilby. Stooges, I'm not sure. What about Shemp? I didn't take Crosby, Stills and Nash because of Young. But then, when you think of the Stooges, you picture the classic three. I guess I'll lighten up and put both trios in.

By the way, do you know that bear-baiting is illegal and yanking her chain is an abomination? Or were you just rattling her cage?

Which one? Barbarella? :-)

Fairy tale? I don't need no stinkin' fairy tale. I am one.

Think you're right about wee Dorothy!

Curly, Larry and Mo - a.k.a. the Three Stooges

Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. Sorry chained_bear, you'll have to lobby Goldilocks herself or find your own fairy tale.

'twas Dorothy, methinks.

Christopher Robin chanted on his walks:
"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"

Seen this snowcloned recently as Pollination, Pollution, and Pandas, Oh My!

Bilby, thanks for Dirty Harry and MASH. There doesn't seem to be a standard order to the names of the Three Furies, so I went with the names of the Three Fates instead. You'll see that a few others came up today too.

Last episode of MASH was titled "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen."

I keep thinking of the 3 furies. Names depend on whether you want to go Greek or Roman.

I like that line from Dirty Harry I think where the punk says, "Who's gonna stop me?"
And steely Clint says, "Smith, Wesson, and me."

Triadomania continues! Bilby, regarding people with three part names: go for it. I don't think I'm going to collect them. I'll donate Jumping Jack Flash.

Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I think they disqualified themselves when they added Young. If I ever make a list of quads, I'll put them there.

Phillips, Craig, and Dean? Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie?

drink, drank, drunk

Crosby, Stills, and Nash?

'Nuther thought. Isn't the olympic motto something like Citius, Altius, Fortius?

How about people with famous 3 word names? I'm thinking of Whispering Barry White, Blind Lemon Jefferson, etc. Or even the 3-brain-celled George Dubya Bush.

Fabulous list.

Pushing on toward 150! Who'd've thunk? Might we reach 200? Several of tonight's contributions were already on the list, lurking on the second page, so check there if doesn’t look like I took your suggestion.

I never heard of "slip, slop, slap", but it gets 50,000 g-hits, so it's in. "Bish Bosh Bash" has a different definition on Urban Dictionary, but that's not a strike against it. "Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania" swept the Baltic permutations, as did Celine Dion with "coulda, woulda, shoulda".

"Click. Go. Earn." does not get many hits. Maybe there's another version? "Hey nonny no" doesn't quite fit. It would have be "Ney nonny no". "Rub-a-dub-dub": Really close. What do people think? And for that matter, what about "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo". Does "thou" disqualify it?

How about latvia, lithuania, estonia and hammer, anvil, stirrup?

The past and the present and the future.
Faith and Hope and Charity,
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three as a magic number.
(Blind Melon, Schoolhouse Rock)

Also -
Coulda, shoulda, woulda / Hammer, anvil, stirrup?
ps - this list is todally alsome!
pps - three men in a tub: butcher, baker, candlestick-maker

Bish bosh bash is a common alternative (at least in the UK) to bippety boppity boo. Meaning, there you go, job done, and then you do this...

Sex, drugs, rock'n'roll.

Thanks to K.Richards.

I notice many websites have this triad thing imprinted on their designer brains these days. "Click. Go. Earn." And so on.

3 is magic. Hash, mushrooms and single malt at each corner of the triangle.

How many men in the tub uselessness?

Okay, I keep coming back with more... but does rub-a-dub-dub count?

There's this skin cancer awareness program in Australia that has lots of ads that go: Slip, Slop, Slap.
Slip on a shirt.
Slop on a sunscreen.
Slap on a hat.
Very lame, I know. Funny thing is the government paid zillions for this marketing brilliance.

Hey nonny no? More of a phrase than a list.

There's also Zip, Zap, Zop, a silly game to play when you're bored with a group of people.

Stock, lock and barrel.

Sex, lies, and YouTube.

Oops.

veni, vidi, vici.

Does cha cha cha count?

Thanks again for all the contributions! I'd never heard of "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash". I must run with the wrong crowd. Regarding the three monkeys, there is some disagreement as to their proper order, but I went with "see no" rather than "hear no" first. Keep 'em coming (triads, not monkeys)!

this is a great list! what do those three monkeys stand for? see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil? something like that. . .

How about bippety, boppity, boo?

No shirt, no shoes, no service.

Thanks, reesetee! I thought I was scraping the bottom of the barrel when I got to 60. But contributions from Wordies, my wife and my daughter spurred me to Google deeper. And I've thought of five more since I logged off last night.

I'm amazed at how long this list has grown. You don't think about how many of these phrases we use until they're all in a neat little list. Thanks, mollusque. :-)

Dude! I'm mad at myself that I didn't even think to suggest that one!

How about "Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash"?

Tic,tac,toe.

Skipvia, you're right. :)

Jennarenn, when it's fake, it looks like they learned it five minutes ago and are trying to remember how to do it. (But then it probably doesn't look fake to most other people.) It's harder to perfect the faraway, distracted look of a Catholic who's trying to get into the groove of praying by doing the gesture, than it is to just do the gesture in the right order. (Of course if you don't do it in the right order, that's a dead giveaway too.)

Oroboros, I have a list that includes that term, but I can't take credit for creating it as it came from a dictionary.

Wait a minute c_b, how can you tell?

EVERYBODY needs to know this! Congrats c_b on ellipsoid glandular bodies! Has anybody done a list on same? Hmmmmm...

Aside from being in a theater class, I can't think of too many other reasons that a non-Christian/Catholic would need to know this. :)

No, sionnach, it's not literal. This usage, at least in the instances I've heard it, is for people who aren't Christian/Catholic to help them remember which of the four "directions" they tap and in which order. You don't actually tap your ellipsoid glandular bodies, but rather move your hand in that direction and tap somewhere around your tum-tum.

Come to think of it, it was in theater class, I believe, where certain individuals had to learn how to make the sign as convincingly as one who was raised in the Church, and could never get it right. Whatever the usage of the phrase, some actors never do quite get the hang of doing the gesture in a convincing way. I can tell, when watching films for example, if someone was taught how to do it or grew up doing it.

Wow, I'm sorry to hijack the thread.

Maybe if you're extra religious you make an extra-big cross, and give the family jewels a tap.

Oh, and how about "stop, drop, and roll?"

I would just like to make the following, slightly puzzled, observation:

In making the sign of the cross, when is it necessary to touch a body part below the waist?

Last time I checked, my testicles were below my waist.

Have I been doing something wrong? Please advise.

Hither,thither and yon?

Nor do they carry a watch in a fob pocket! My context is military, specifically USAF.

oroboros, I always heard it in a slightly different order, and not about leaving someplace but about making a proper "sign of the cross": "spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch." Of course, no one really carries their wallet in their front left breast pocket anymore (do they?) so that doesn't really help anyone remember.

I've always used shit, shower, shave and shinola. (Companion to preparation for leaving litany: spectacles, testicles, watch 'n wallet).

Wow! What a hendiatristic outpouring! Keep those triads coming! In a couple of cases with alternative versions, I've used the one with the most Google hits.

Tom, Dick and Harry.

Also--this is one of my siblings' favorite sayings but I kinda hate it. I'm suggesting it in a spirit of comprehensiveness. That's all. Really. And I always thought they're kind of in the wrong order.

Shower, shit and shave.

No, probably not, skipvia. My brain is on the fourth or fifth verse of Mack the Knife and there's no end in sight.

"Ready, aim, fire," and "On your mark, get set, go" just occurred to me.

But a very good earworm, reesetee. Maybe it will supplant Mac the Knife for a while.

Signed, sealed, and delivered just popped into my head. (Oh, good grief--an earworm and eyeworm in one.)

I've always heard the version "snakes and snails...".

Excellent list! Definitely a favorite. :-)

I favorited this list, it's great! No suggestions are really coming to mind right now except the line from The Truman Show -- "Good afternoon, good evening, and good night."

How about "gold, frankincense, and myrrh"; for those with a Christian bent, there's "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!", or "the father, the son, and the holy ghost". or, "a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou".

Fun! How 'bout Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?

I love this list! How about "location, location, and location?"