etymology - What is the cultural origin of "Thrice Honored"

"Thrice-Honored Father", "Thrice-Honored Rulers" or the like.

The term appears in the mid-nineteenth century books.

For example: here and here and here and here.

It has a classical feel to it -- Latin or Chinese. But I can't find much about it. What is the background of this phrase?

Answer

Mathematics or Hyperbole

As it has been used at least since Middle English, thrice participates in two linguistic systems of numbering. In a one, two, three system, thrice means ‘three times’:

Published to commemorate the artist/photographer's [Luis González Palma] third invitation and participation at the Venice Biennale in 2017, making him the very first and only Latin-American artist thus far to be thrice-honored by the most prestigious art retrospective in the world.

The Guatemalan photographer had been invited to the Venice Biennale three times, thus thrice-honored.

In a one, two, many system, however, thrice means ‘to a great degree’:

There was this many knyghtes that overmacched [‘overmatched’ defeated] sir Gawayne for all his thryse double myght. — Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur, ca. 1470.

Now I don't suspect Sir Thomas expected his readers to pause his tale of a noble knight to solve a simple multiplication problem, but instead is using thrice double hyperbolically. For all Gawain’s legendary prowess, there were still knights who could “overmatch” him.

Thrice Double Shakespeare, Thrise Double Harvey, Twice Jonson

Shakespeare uses thrice two times in this sense, including Malory’s thrice double:

[Orlando to Oliver] he is thrice a villain that says such a father begot villains. — AYL 1, 1, 54.

[Caliban to Prospero] What a thrice double ass / Was I... — Tem 5, 1, 296.

As a convenient intensifier, thrice invited the formation of readily understood compounds. Gabriel Harvey’s Letter-Book (1579) uses thrice — actually the older spelling thrise where the genitive ending is more transparent — with six different adjectives: happye and thrise happye (57, 92), thrise happye alone (78), thrise venerable (60), thrishonorable, in reference to Spenser’s moustache (61), thrise mightye (69), thrise dulcer (110), and thrise blessed (130).

Shakespeare uses six such compounds (or strictly thrice double, if you like):

[Tamora to Titus] Thrice-noble Titus, spare my son. Tit 1, 1, 20.

[disguised Tamora to Titus] send for Lucius, thy thrice-valiant son. — Tit 5, 2, 112.

[Ulysses to Ajax] thy parts of nature / Thrice-famed beyond ... all erudition. — TC 2, 3, 240.

[Troilus alone] What will it be, / When that the watery palate tastes indeed / Love's thrice-repured nectar? [Q; F thrice reputed] [or: three-times purified] — TC 3, 2, 20.

[Warwick to King, of Gloucester] violent hands were laid / Upon the life of this thrice-famed Duke. — 2H6, 3, 2, 157.

[Othello to all, of custom] Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war / My thrice-driven bed of down. — Oth 1, 3, 229.

Although Shakespeare does not specifically use thrice-honoured, both his plays and Malory’s romance show that one need not look to French or Latin for its origins. Both Gabriel Harvey and Shakespeare also show that the pattern could be easily followed with other adjectives to produce further compounds.

When Shakespeare’s rival Ben Jonson was briefly imprisoned in 1605 for once again running afoul of the censors, he penned a letter “to the most nobly virtuous and thrice-honoured Earl of Salisbury.” And upon Jonson’s death

Shackerley Marmion also wrote … an elegy on Jonson, published in 1638, titled “A Funeral Sacrifice, to the Sacred Memory of his Thrice-Honored Father, Ben Jonson.”

Early American Sources

As Mormion elegized Jonson, when Josiah Winslow, the first colonial governor born in America, died in 1680, a clergyman in Scituate penned an elegy in rather tortured pentameter:

Upon the much to be lamented DEATH of the thrice three times honoured JOSIAH WINSLOW, Esq., late GOVERNOUR of New Plymouth

Thrice honoured Rulers, Elders, and People all
Come and lament this stately Cedar's fall.
… Thrice Royal CHARLES, were he in person here,
Into thy Urn, would drop a sacred tear. — The Rev. William Wetherell, Scituate, Mass., 1680.

On a happier note, and with a far greater sense of the powers of English, William Penn closes a letter to his wife:

So farewell to my thrice dearly beloved wife and children! Yours, as God pleaseth, in that which no waters can quench, no time forget, nor distance wear away, but remains for ever, " Worminghurst, fourth of sixth month, 1682. William Penn. — cited in: Sydney Smith, The Edinburgh Review 21(1813), 458.

A Fourth of July speech in 1795 begins with a rhetorical flourish:

This honored, thrice honored day completes the nineteenth anniversary of our political freedom: it constitutes an august era in the annals of time, well worthy of being held in perpetual remembrance to the latest generations: it founds an illustrious epocha in the history of man, highly meriting most grateful inscription, on the living tablet of the raptured heart. — An oration on the independence of the United States of Federate America; pronounced at Portsmouth, New-Hampshire, July 4, 1795. / By George Richards.

The construction adjective, thrice adjective seems to have been a favored device, also in England:

But happy they, thrice happy, who profess Their greatest blessing is the power to bless… — The British Critic, and Quarterly Theological Review, 1801.

Welcome, thrice, welcome, ye noble patriots, to this asylum of the oppressed! — William Hamilton, Report of the Trial and Acquittal of Edward Shippen, Esq., Chief Justice, 1805.

The city of Providence, fortunate in its situation at the head-waters of Narragansett Bay, thrice fortunate in its birth of freedom and soul liberty in 1636, was most highly favored in the character and quality of its founders. — Biographical Pamphlet, 1812.

This construction apparently enjoyed a long-lived popularity. First seen in Gabriel Harvey, Phineas Fletcher manages to use happy, thrice happy three times in only seven lines:

Thrice Happy Times
Happy, thrice happy times in silver age!
…
Happy, thrice happy age! happy, thrice happy times! — Phineas Fletcher (d. 1650).

Conclusion

Thrice as a hyperbolic intensifier and its compounds offered poets and orators, especially those of lesser skills, a way of adding gravitas to their works. Thus one can imagine Coleridge's delight in addressing “thrice-honoured fleas” in a tribute to John Donne’s little erotic poem. Thrice compounds remained popular well into the twentieth century: At archive.org, a query for thrice honoured and thrice honored yielded together 2361 hits, but Fletcher’s happy, thrice happy produced 7476.

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