3 (number) - As A Lucky or Unlucky Number

As A Lucky or Unlucky Number

Three (三, formal writing: 叁, pinyin san1, Cantonese: saam1) is considered a good number in Chinese culture because it sounds like the word "alive" (生 pinyin sheng1, Cantonese: saang1), compared to four (四, pinyin: si4, Cantonese: sei1), which sounds like the word "death" (死 pinyin si3, Cantonese: sei2).

Counting to three is common in situations where a group of people wish to perform an action in synchrony: Now, on the count of three, everybody pull! Assuming the counter is proceeding at a uniform rate, the first two counts are necessary to establish the rate, but then everyone can predict when three" will come based on "one" and "two"; this is likely why three is used instead of some other number.

In Vietnam, there is a superstition that considers it bad luck to take a photo with three people in it; it is professed that the person in the middle will die soon.

There is another superstition that it is unlucky to take a third light, that is, to be the third person to light a cigarette from the same match or lighter. This superstition is sometimes asserted to have originated among soldiers in the trenches of the First World War when a sniper might see the first light, take aim on the second and fire on the third.

The phrase "Third time's the charm" refers to the superstition that after two failures in any endeavor, a third attempt is more likely to succeed. This is also sometimes seen in reverse, as in "third man gets caught".

Luck, especially bad luck, is often said to "come in threes".

The Rule of Three is an American superstition in which celebrity deaths tend to occur in threes.

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Famous quotes containing the words lucky, unlucky and/or number:

    Roger Thornhill: Tell me, how does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?
    Eve Kendall: Lucky I guess.
    Roger Thornhill: No, not lucky. Naughty, wicked, up to no good. Ever kill anyone? Because I bet you could tease a man to death without half trying. So stop trying.
    Ernest Lehman (b.1920)

    “O what unlucky streak
    Twisting inside me, made me break the line?
    What was the rock my gliding childhood struck,
    And what bright unreal path has led me here?”
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    ... in every State there are more women who can read and write than the whole number of illiterate male voters; more white women who can read and write than all Negro voters; more American women who can read and write than all foreign voters.
    —National Woman Suffrage Association. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)