trice

On 15 July 1965, NASA’s Mariner 4 probe sent back grainy images of Mars, revealing a forbidding surface that destroyed florid Victorian speculation in a trice.

From Nature ● Jan. 7, 2019

We’d hired someone to help us sort through our belongings—keep it, sell it, give it away—Patty could get rid of anything in a trice.

From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2018

He was maybe three feet from the net, but somehow, in a trice, managed to extend his left arm sideways and tilt his racquet head down toward his thighs.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 30, 2016

You saw the dancer, and then in a trice you heard the music; but seven years ago this aspect of Balanchine dancing had virtually slipped away.

From New York Times ● Jun. 25, 2015

My fingers could travel the distance in a trice.

From "Ella Enchanted" by Gail Carson Levine

The leopard was quickly triced to a pole, and they were back in Kohima.

From The Three Sapphires by W. A. Fraser

A flag flies from his top-gallant—in plain English, his hat—while a Union Jack is fixed at the forepeak and an anchor is triced up at the bows, in readiness for “heaving-to.”

From The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries To-Day and in Days of Old by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

Nothing was there, save the big square ports, triced up by chains to admit the air into the saloon.

From Gold Out of Celebes by Aylward Edward Dingle

Do you notice, Mr Gadsby, that she has no nettings triced up on her port side?

From A Middy of the King A Romance of the Old British Navy by Edward S. Hodgson

“It’s the fellah that’s triced up so nately to the port rail, sor,” answered Dolan.

From Dick Leslie's Luck A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure by Harold Piffard

He lowered the foresail, and still further reduced the mainsail by tricing up the tack.

From A Desperate Voyage by Edward Frederick Knight

“Good!” said I. “Then let them be brought on deck at once, and see that all is ready for tricing them up, should those boats succeed in getting dangerously near to us.”

From A Middy in Command A Tale of the Slave Squadron by Edward S. Hodgson

Everywhere they can be distinguished by their dress, by their enormous oiled sunshades, and by their habit of tricing their loads high up to the carrying pole.

From An Australian in China Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma by George Ernest Morrison

Thorogood reached the 6-inch battery breathless, and found the guns' crews busy tricing up their mess-tables overhead.

From The Long Trick by Bartimeus

Her crew were tricing up the boarding-netting, dragging round the starboard guns, knocking new portholes for them, and making every preparation for a desperate resistance.

From The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle