Orig. (and still often) in Gr. form trilithon. [ad. Gr. τρίλιθον, neut. of τρίλιθος adj., of three stones, f. τρι-, TRI- λίθος stone; so mod.F. trilithe.] A prehistoric structure or monument consisting of three large stones, two upright and one resting upon them as a lintel.
α. 1740. W. Stukeley, Stonehenge, iv. 22. This adytum … is in truth compos’d of certain compages of stones, which I shall call trilithons, because made, each of two upright stones, with an impost at top.
1881. T. Hardy, What Shepherd Saw, in Changed Man, etc. (1913), 190. A Druidical trilithon, consisting of three oblong stones in the form of a doorway.
1904. Windle, Rem. Prehist. Age Brit., 185. An ellipse of hewn sarsen trilithons, with mortise and tenon connections.
β. 1851. D. Wilson, Preh. Ann. (1863), I. iii. 93. A trilith or complete cromlech, consisting only of three stones.
1852. Wright, Celt, Rom. & Saxon, ii. 59. Stones … arranged in what the French archæologists term triliths.
1867. Pearson, Hist. Eng., I. 78. Circles of monoliths or triliths, sometimes surrounding what seems an altar.
b. (in form trilithon) repr. Gr. τρίλιθον applied to the Jupiter temple at Bálbec, in the wall of which there are three gigantic stones lying end to end.
1847. Leitch, trans. C. O. Müller’s Anc. Art, § 269. 262. Of the trilithon at Balbec there are to be seen stones as much as 60 feet in length.
1881. Athenæum, 6 Aug., 174/2. She [Mrs. G. Sumner] attributes the trilithon temple of Baalbek … to those mysterious Phœnician builders.
Hence Trilithic a. (erron. trilithonic), pertaining to or of the nature of a trilith.
1834. Gentl. Mag., Feb., 175. Having what may almost be called the unique trilithonic construction.
1872. Latham, Eng. Dict., Trilithic.
