trips

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of trip.

   The agency arranged several trips for the students.

   Both trips were canceled because of the storm.

   Note

   Every sense of the noun forms its plural the regular way, so context decides the meaning: journeys to the coast, stumbles on the stairs, or the social slips of an awkward guest. The colloquial drug sense and the archaic sense of errors take the same plural. The same spelling is also the poker hand, which names a single hand of three matching cards, not several of anything.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of trip.

   The dog trips over its own paws when it gets excited.

   The sensor trips the alarm the moment the door opens.

   Note

   One form serves both sides of the verb. It is intransitive when the subject stumbles or is set off (the breaker trips) and transitive when the subject causes the stumble or the activation (a defender trips a runner, the wire trips the alarm). The object usually shows which reading is meant.

3. 3
   nounslanguncountable

   Three of a kind in poker, especially when one of the matching cards is in the player's hand and the other two lie on the board.

   He turned trips when a third king appeared among the community cards.

   Nobody read her for trips until she shoved on the river.

   Note

   Poker players divide three of a kind by where the matching cards sit. Here the pair lies face up on the board and only one card is hidden, so the hand is easier for opponents to suspect. A set reverses that, with a pocket pair meeting one board card. The word is casual table slang and usually goes without an article: a player turns or makes trips.

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