tryst
A prearranged meeting or assignation, now especially between lovers to meet at a specific place and time.
Noun
- A prearranged meeting or assignation, now especially between lovers to meet at a specific place and time.
- And Vivien, like the tenderest-hearted maid / That ever bided tryst at village stile, / Made answer, either eyelid wet with tears: […] - 1874, Alfred Tennyson, “Merlin and Vivien”, in Idylls of the King (The Works of...
- A silence supreme and altogether European. Shutters drawn, shops barred. A red glow here and there to mark a tryst. - 1934, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Grove Press, published 1961, page 6:
- But, for the most part, we shall mark our progress to the dawn of life by the measure of those 40 natural milestones, the trysts that enrich our pilgrimage. - 2004, Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to...
- A mutual agreement, a covenant.
- A market fair, especially a recurring one held on a schedule, where livestock sales took place.
Coordinate Terms: fair mart market farmers' market
Origin
From Middle English tryst, trist, from Old French triste, tristre (“waiting place, appointed station in hunting”), probably from a North Germanic source such as Old Norse treysta (“to make safe, secure”), from traust (“confidence, trust, security, help, shelter, safe abode”), from Proto-Germanic *traustą (“trust, shelter”), from Proto-Indo-European *deru-, *dreu-, *drū- (“to be firm, be solid”). Doublet of trust, see there for more.
Forms
Derived
Verb
- To make a tryst; to agree to meet at a place.
- To arrange or appoint (a meeting time etc.).
- To keep a tryst, to meet at an agreed place and time.
- He said he was jealous, and craved something to ease his care. 'It's but a small thing I ask,' says he, 'but it will make me a happy man, and nothing ever shall come atween us. Tryst wi' me for Beltane's E'en on the...