ˈthree-ˈdecker
[f. three-deck: see decker2.]
1. a. A three-decked ship; formerly spec. a line-of-battle ship carrying guns on three decks.
| 1792 A. Young Trav. France 181 The bason of Toulon, with ranges of three deckers, and other large men of war. 1795 [see decker2]. 1797 Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3) XVII. 403/1 In three-deckers it [the fire hearth] is..on the middle deck. 1855 Tennyson Maud i. i. xiii, If..the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam. |
b. fig. Applied to a thing (or person) of great size or importance.
| 1835 E. FitzGerald Lett. (1889) I. 34 Pray do write to me: a few lines soon are better than a three-decker a month hence. 1836 E. Howard R. Reefer xlv, Three deckers—words of Latin or Greek derivation. 1877 Black Green Past. xxiv, He went over to Mrs. Blythe,..and sat down by that majestic three-decker. 1886 Dowden Shelley (1887) I. iii. 115 Some great three-decker of orthodoxy. |
2. transf. Something consisting of three ranges or divisions: spec. a. Nickname for the three-storied pulpit formerly in use, consisting of the desk for the clerk, the reading desk, and the pulpit proper, one above another. b. A skirt with three flounces. c. A three-volume novel. d. A three-storey building. U.S. local.
| 1852 A. Mozley in Christian Remembrancer July 92 In the midst of the church stands, elaborately carved, the offensive structure of pulpit, reading-desk, and clerk's desk; in fact, a regular old three-decker in full sail westward. 1874 J. T. Micklethwaite Mod. Par. Churches 56 The Georgian three-decker, the few surviving examples of which are now such objects of scorn. 1894 Kipling in Sat. Rev. 14 July 44/1 The old three-decker. And the three-volume novel is doomed. 1895 Westm. Gaz. 26 Apr. 2/1 The long-winded novel of our forefathers—what you may call the old three-decker of fiction. 1909 Daily Chron. 3 May 7/4 That graceful form of skirt, which consists of three flounces (known sometimes to the irreverent as a ‘three-decker’). 1910 Gathorne-Hardy Mem. 1st Earl Cranbrook I. 115 In the place now occupied by the present one [chancel arch] the old ‘three-decker’ stood [in 1858]. 1942 Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §83/1 Three- (or more) decker, a building of three, or more, stories. 1961 L. Mumford City in History xv. 465 Vast wooden firetraps called three-deckers in New England, happily blessed with open-air porches. 1978 J. Carroll Mortal Friends ii. iii. 151 The flat, the top floor of a Southie three-decker, was large enough. |
3. attrib. (in senses 1 b and 2).
| 1860 O. W. Holmes Prof. Breakf.-t. ii, A boy..with a three-decker brain. 1890 John Bull 5 Apr. 229/1 In the latter part of the eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries..great ‘three-decker’ pulpits blocked up the chancels. 1898 Daily News 29 Sept. 3/4 The ‘three-decker’ skirt is supplemented by a three-decker cape. 1904 Daily Chron. 27 Apr. 7/4 The winding rope attached to the three-decker cage parted, and it dropped a distance of 2,000 ft. 1926 G. Ade Let. 8 Sept. (1973) 110 While some of us have been building chicken coops.., Mr. Dreiser has been creating sky-scrapers. He makes the old three-decker novel look like a pamphlet. 1981 N. & Q. June 271/1 The widespread circulation of Evangelical tracts and sermons helped to create a sympathetic readership for the voluminous three-decker novel. |