troika

Etymology

From Russian тро́йка (trójka, “a group of three”).

noun

1. A Russian carriage drawn by a team of three horses abreast.
   A great writer of the last epoch, comparing Russia to a swift troika galloping to an unknown goal, exclaims 'Oh, troika, birdlike troika, who invented thee!' and adds, in proud ecstasy, that all the peoples of the world stand aside respectfully to make way for the recklessly galloping troika to pass. 1880, Constance Garnett, chapter VI, in The Brothers Karamazov, book XII, translation of original by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, page 787
   When Gogol wrote his great passage on the troika speeding across the steppes, he likened it to Russia itself, advancing across the earth. 1960, Lesley Blanch, The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus, Tauris Parke Paperbacks, published 2006, page 145
   Travelling part of the way by rail and the remainder by troika, he reached Orenburg shortly before Christmas. 1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia, Oxford University Press, published 2001, page 367
2. A party or group of three, especially a ruling council of three people in Russian contexts.
   The investigator suspected the poor dead bastards were just a vodka troika that had cheerily frozen to death. 1981, Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park, Ballantine Books, published 2007, page 3
   “He said, 'Let me get the best people.' And that's what he did. He got John Kalodner and Gary Gersh and Tom Zutaut, and they became stars in their own right.” Over the ensuing decade, that troika of talent-finders would bring a host of multiplatinum artists—from Cher and Aerosmith to Guns N' Roses and Nirvana—to Geffen. 2006, Barney Hoskyns, Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends, John Wiley & Sons, published 2006, page 265
   No longer is the best picture going to be a toss-up between that troika of national-historical heavies: Argo, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty. 2013-01-11, Tom Shone, “Oscar nominations pull a surprise by showing some taste — but will it last?”, in The Guardian