trilateraladj.n.

1660 tr. I. Barrow Euclide's Elements i. 3 Three-sided or Trilateral figures are such as are conteined under three right lines.

1788 T. Taylor tr. Proclus Philos. & Math. Comm. I. 173 Euclid appears to me to have made a separate division into angles and sides, from considering this alone, that every triangle is not also trilateral.

1828 O. Gregory Hutton's Course Math. (ed. 9) II. 136 The quadrilateral space EAA′E′ is double the trilateral space AA′F.

1875 C. Merivale Gen. Hist. Rome xviii. 102 Two powers now remained to struggle for the dominion of the trilateral island [Sicily].

1965 Economist 20 Feb. 758/1 Ethiopia. A trilateral agreement is being negotiated with the object of harnessing German and American help in forming an Ethiopian frontier defence force.

1973 N.Y. Times 2 Mar. 35/1 A group of distinguished private citizens in the United States, Japan and Europe are now organizing what they call ‘the trilateral commission’ to study the common problems of these three power centers.

1977 Times 28 Apr. 7/4 Mr Jimmy Carter..really believes in what has been called the trilateral system of America, Europe and Japan.

1981 Washington Post 18 Mar. a1/2 For the record, the Trilateral Commission is a New York-based policy group formed by Rockefeller in 1973 in a reaction to the nationalistic foreign economic policy of President Nixon, which disturbed some traditional U.S. allies.

1984 Times 5 Mar. 12/2 It was thanks to the complicated trilateral arrangement worked out in secret..that he was taken to Pakistan.

1766 Compl. Farmer at Surveying Triangles are figures comprehended under three right lines, and..might be better called trilaterals.

1870 Observer 9 Oct. 5/2 From the canal, round the trilateral of St. Denis, to the Seine about Argenteuil, the Prussian Guards..have their stations.

1885 C. Leudesdorf tr. L. Cremona Elements Projective Geom. 31 It follows that the triangles (trilaterals) bcd, b′c′d′ are also in perspective.

1976 R. H. Ullman in Foreign Affairs Oct. 1 ‘Trilateralism’..is the latest attempt both to describe and to prescribe for the relationship between the United States and the other principal democratic, industrialized, market-economy states.

1977 Foreign Policy No. 29. 90 The original trilateralism, which links prominent citizens of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan in an international ‘commission’, arises from the shared ideological commitment of its members to liberal values and politics. The goals of Arab trilateralism, however, are not expressed in ideological terms.

1981 Washington Post 18 Mar. a5/6 But old fears die hard, and the far right is ever-vigilant for signs of creeping Trilateralism within the citadel.

1977 Studia Diplomatica XXX. 231 Dr Kissinger can hardly be said to have been unaware of the ‘Trilateralists’.

1981 Washington Post 18 Mar. a1/2 Remember those dreaded, three-sided Trilateralists, the international conspirators headed by David Rockefeller who were going to take over the world?

a1856 W. Hamilton Lect. Metaphysics (1860) III. xi. 208 [A] triangle [is distinguished] from every other class of mathematical figures, by the single character of trilaterality.

1847 Webster's Amer. Dict. Eng. Lang. Trilaterally.

1727 N. Bailey Universal Etymol. Eng. Dict. II Trilateralness, the having three Sides.