Tris·tram

(trĭs′trəm)

Variant of Tristan.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Tris•tram

(ˈtrɪs trəm)

also Tris•tan

(-tən)

Tris•tam

(-təm)

n.

one of the knights of the Round Table, whose love for Iseult, wife of King Mark, is the subject of many romances.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

Tristram - (Middle Ages) the nephew of the king of Cornwall who (according to legend) fell in love with his uncle's bride (Iseult) after they mistakenly drank a love potion that left them eternally in love with each other

Tristan

legend, fable - a story about mythical or supernatural beings or events

Dark Ages, Middle Ages - the period of history between classical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

One might just as well try to make out that the history of Guarino Mezquino, or of the quest of the Holy Grail, is false, or that the loves of Tristram and the Queen Yseult are apocryphal, as well as those of Guinevere and Lancelot, when there are persons who can almost remember having seen the Dame Quintanona, who was the best cupbearer in Great Britain.

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He had found the origins of those tricks and turns of Heine's in 'Tristram Shandy' and the 'Sentimental Journey;' and this galled me, as if he had shown that some mistress of my soul had studied her graces from another girl, and that it was not all her own hair that she wore.

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we were Tristram and Yseult, we were all the great lovers in the Pantheon of love."

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Prominent, on the other hand, among the sentimentalists is Laurence Sterne, who, inappropriately enough, was a clergyman, the author of 'Tristram Shandy.' This book is quite unlike anything else ever written.

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The latter more than once received from his lips curses as sententious and as complicated as that celebrated anathema of the church, for a knowledge of which most unlettered Protestants are indebted to the pious researches of the worthy Tristram Shandy.

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"But to horse, Sir Nigel, you and yours and we shall seek the chateau of Sir Tristram de Rochefort, which is two miles on this side of Villefranche.

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``Ay, but I promise you,'' said De Bracy, ``that neither Tristram nor Lancelot would have been match, hand to hand, for Richard Plantagenet, and I think it was not their wont to take odds against a single man.''

``Was it in battle that Lancelot de Lac and Sir Tristram won renown?

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"Oh, I'll be your little child," said Tristram, jovially; "I'll take you by the hand.

"Yes," said Tristram, "I suppose I am original; like all those immoral pictures in the Louvre."

Tristram seemed restless and suspicious; he eyed his friend askance, and then, "What are you up to, any way?" he demanded.

you make my flesh creep!" cried Tristram. "And while you sat in your hack, watching the play, as you call it, the other man marched in and bagged your sixty thousand dollars?"

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