Holy Trinity

noun

1

: trinity sense 1

According to legend, St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to the Celts.

—Rosemary Ellen Guiley

2

or holy trinity

a

: a group of three things or people regarded as having fundamental importance or prominence in a particular place or area of interest or activity

By September, the region's famous foliage is emerging, the air is crisp, and it's prime time for the first two sports of the Woodstock Holy Trinity of fishing, biking, and skiing.

—National Geographic

I grew up in a town so white that our celebrity holy trinity consisted of Martha Stewart, Paul Newman, and Jason Robards.

—Robert Wilder

Vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, the holy trinity of young ice-cream purists …

—Pierre Franey

… mocks the holy trinity of the art world—sex, drugs and pretension.

—Maria Simson

b

cooking : the combination of onion, bell pepper, and celery as it is employed in Cajun and Creole cuisine

Almost every traditional Cajun recipe calls for the merged flavors of the Holy Trinity to serve as its underpinning, rendering the three aromatic vegetables the most prized ingredients of all in New Orleans cookery.

—Lia Ryerson

Examples of Holy Trinity in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Mary Ann was born in 1807 and baptized at Georgetown’s Holy Trinity Catholic Church. —James Johnston, Washington Post, 24 June 2024

And who can forget the Holy Trinity mugging it up for Roxanne in the Ritz bathtub! —Ivan Shaw, Vogue, 18 June 2024

Stonewall 55: Legacy Without Limits, Brooklyn Celebrate the present by honoring the past with St. Ann’s LGBTQ+ Action Group and the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights. —Muri Assunção, New York Daily News, 15 June 2024

As the article correctly noted, the ceremony was at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, not Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (where the couple met in 2015). —New York Times, 9 June 2024

Word History

First Known Use

13th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1