three, adj. 1. The number of lunchboxes that will outlast the children who carry them. 2. The number of mandarins it takes to believe the week will hold. 3. A word spoken aloud in a kitchen that sounds, each time, like a small conviction— three spoons, three bodies, three portions of something that was once just rice and is now a jurisdiction. 4. (archaic) The minimum number of overlapping Sundays required to constitute a life.