Meaning & Analysis
In an instant; very quickly—so fast it happens almost at once.
Insights
Instant readiness
The phrase signals agility and prompt response: a person or system able to act ‘in a trice’ is primed, organized, and light on its feet.
Ephemeral chances
Opportunities can open and close in a blink; ‘in a trice’ cautions that timing is everything and rewards those who move without dithering.
Performative urgency
Saying ‘I’ll be there in a trice’ functions as a social promise—language that performs speed to reassure, placate, or impress, whether or not the clocked time is literally instant.
Velocity’s trade-offs
What’s done ‘in a trice’ risks thinness or error; the idiom can gently warn that haste may shortcut depth even as it achieves speed.
Workman’s etymology
‘Trice’ began as a noun meaning a sudden pull or jerk; to ‘trice up’ was to hoist or snatch with a rope. Time is measured metaphorically by the quickness of a single tug—turning manual motion into a unit of immediacy.
Early modern ubiquity
The idiom thrives in Tudor–Stuart drama and proverb lists—‘at a trice,’ ‘with a trice,’ ‘before you can say Amen’—where it gives dialogue brisk tempo and comic snap.
Urban tempo
As towns grew and stages, markets, and coffeehouses accelerated social rhythms, formulas for speed became cultural currency; ‘in a trice’ is a pocket-sized clock for bustling life.
Kin sayings
It aligns with ‘in a twinkling,’ ‘with the turning of a hand,’ Spanish ‘en un santiamén,’ and French ‘en un clin d’œil’—a cross-linguistic habit of timing by tiny bodily motions or liturgical moments.
Speech-act economy
Brief, punchy promises of speed oil social gears: by compressing time into a monosyllable, the speaker buys patience and signals cooperative intent.
Rhetorical Devices
Idiom
A fixed phrase whose meaning (‘instantly’) exceeds its literal parts, enabling rapid recognition and compact force.
Metonymy
A single ‘trice’—a pull—stands for a minimal time-slice, letting physical motion denote temporal brevity.
Alliteration and snap
The crisp /tr/ onset mirrors quickness; the monosyllable lands like a tap, matching sense with sound.
Hyperbole
No act is truly instantaneous; the exaggeration dramatizes eagerness and efficiency.
Elliptical adverbial
A short prepositional tag (‘in a trice’) bolts onto clauses, injecting pace without syntactic clutter.
Transcription
Quotations
To tell you what conceyte I had than in a tryce, The matter were to nyse.
At a trice.
With a trice.
I am with him in a trice.
I'le be with you in a trice.
To do it in the turn of a hand, viz. in a trice, before you can say Amen.
Shakespeare Citations
I'll be with you again, In a trice.
O, the charity of a penny cord! It sums up thousands in a trice.
On a trice .. Even in a dream, were we divided.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.