Other forms: tricycles
A tricycle is a cycle with three wheels. A child's tricycle, ride a tricycle, an adult tricycle.
Three wheels mean it will not fall over, which is why tricycles are made for small children and for adults who need stability. Delivery tricycles carry a box between two wheels and are widely used in cities. Trike is the usual short form and covers motorised versions too. Note that tricycles were serious adult transport in the 1880s, before the safety bicycle made two wheels easy to ride.
1nountricycleA cycle with three wheels.
“The toddler pedalled her red tricycle up and down the garden path.”
tricycle is a cycle.
French tricycle is tri-, three, plus the Greek kuklos, a wheel. Bicycle was coined the same way a few years earlier, and both words are younger than the machines they name are old.
French
tricycle
English, today
tricycle
From French tricycle. by surface analysis, tri- + cycle.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA