Definition of "triode" [triode]

• A highly evacuated electron tube containing an anode, a cathode, and a control grid. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "When I was a teenager learning about vacuum tubes, bias was a voltage applied to the grid of a triode."
• "When I was a teenager bias was a voltage applied to the grid of a triode (a kind of vacuum tube): a necessary thing, not a bad thing."
• "Then, almost simultaneously in 1911 and 1912, several engineers—de Forest among them—did manage to combine the triode with other existing circuit components to produce a workable amplifier."