[f. three-deck: see DECKER2.]
1. A three-decked ship; formerly spec. a line-of-battle ship carrying guns on three decks.
1795. Three deckers [see DECKER2].
1797. Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3), XVII. 403/1. In three-deckers it [the fire hearth] is … on the middle deck.
1855. Tennyson, Maud, I. I. xiii. If … the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam.
b. fig. Applied to a thing (or person) of great size or importance.
1835. E. FitzGerald, Lett. (1889), I. 34. Pray do write to me: a few lines soon are better than a three-decker a month hence.
1836. E. Howard, R. Reefer, xlv. Three deckers—words of Latin or Greek derivation.
1877. Black, Green Past., xxiv. He went over to Mrs. Blythe,… and sat down by that majestic three-decker.
1886. Dowden, Shelley (1887), I. iii. 115. Some great three-decker of orthodoxy.
2. transf. Something consisting of three ranges or divisions: spec. a. Nickname for the three-storied pulpit formerly in use, consisting of the desk for the clerk, the reading desk, and the pulpit proper, one above another. b. A skirt with three flounces. c. A three-volume novel.
1874. Micklethwaite, Mod. Par. Churches, 56. The Georgian three-decker, the few surviving examples of which are now such objects of scorn.
1895. Westm. Gaz., 26 April, 2/1. The long-winded novel of our forefathers—what you may call the old three-decker of fiction.
1909. Daily Chron., 3 May, 7/4. That graceful form of skirt, which consists of three flounces (known sometimes to the irreverent as a ‘three-decker’).
1910. Gathorne-Hardy Mem. 1st Earl Cranbrook I. 115. In the place now occupied by the present one [chancel arch] the old ‘three-decker’ stood [in 1858].
3. attrib. (in senses 1 b and 2).
1860. O. W. Holmes, Prof. Breakf.-t., ii. A boy … with a three-decker brain.
1884. Saint Paul Globe, 25 June, 5/3. Miss Revoir, with 37 votes out of a total of 82, won a beautiful three-decker cake.
1890. John Bull, 5 April, 229/1. In the latter part of the eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth centuries … great ‘three-decker’ pulpits blocked up the chancels.
1898. Daily News, 29 Sept., 3/4. The ‘three-decker’ skirt is supplemented by a three-decker cape.
1904. Daily Chron., 27 April, 7/4. The winding rope attached to the three-decker cage parted, and it dropped a distance of 2,000ft.
