Other forms: triples, tripled, tripling
To triple something is to make it three times as big. Triple the amount, sales tripled, triple your money.
It works both ways: you can triple something, and something can triple by itself. As an adjective it means having three parts: triple glazing, a triple jump, the triple crown. In music, triple time has three beats to the bar. Note triplet, one of three born together; triplicate, meaning three copies; and that treble is the British near-synonym, used especially in football for winning three trophies.
1verbtripleTo make or become three times as big.
“The rent tripled in about eight years.”
2adjectiveadjectiveHaving three parts.
“The windows are triple glazed and the room is still cold.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
triple is a threefold amount.
Latin triplus means threefold, from tres, three. Triple, treble and triplicate are the same Latin word arriving through different routes, which is why English has three words for one idea.
Proto-Indo-European
*tréyes
Latin
triplus
Middle English
triple
English, today
triple
From Middle English triple (also þripell), from Latin triplus. a doublet of treble.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA