Note 170 — Chapter III · THE PROGRESS OF CARD-PLAYING.
Reading edition
Poems on State Affairs, vol. iii, p. 25. Edit. 1704. "Tricon is, at cards, that which we now call a gleek of Kings, Queens, Knaves, &c., viz. three of them in one hand together."—Howell's Edition of Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary, 1673. The term Gleek is probably derived from the German Gleich, signifying like; thus the Gleek was a certain number of cards of a like kind. See further illustrations of the word Gleek in Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic Words.