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

In a trice she can shift registers, though, and her candor and keenness of eye translate surprisingly well to tenderness.

From New York Times ● Jan. 30, 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

A marvel, really, the ease with which Dick negotiated changes of mood; in a trice, all trace of meanness, of sullen bravura, had evaporated.

From "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote

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 Hodgson, Edward S.

I know I triced that up properly last night.

From The Battleship Boys at Sea Two Apprentices in Uncle Sam's Navy by Patchin, Frank Gee

Lines extended from the jib-boom end around the ship, triced up to the lower yard-arms, for drying scrubbed hammocks.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Belcher, Edward, Sir

He attacked her gallantly, but she was heavily armed and strongly manned, and, before he could venture to run alongside, had triced up her boarding nettings.

From Notable Voyagers From Columbus to Nordenskiold by Kingston, William Henry Giles

At midday, we triced up our boarding-nettings and made clear for action, with our courses up.

From Privateers and Privateering by Statham, E. P.

The work of tricing him up occupied the beach-combers throughout the entire day.

From Moran of the Lady Letty by Norris, Frank

Those used for the hammocks, or tricing up the bags between the beams on the lower-deck.

From The Sailor's Word-Book An Alphabetical Digest of Nautical Terms, including Some More Especially Military and Scientific, but Useful to Seamen; as well as Archaisms of Early Voyagers, etc. by Belcher, Edward, Sir

In a moment, cutting the tricing lines of her boarding nettings, they sprang up her side and threw themselves on the deck.

From True Blue by Kingston, William Henry Giles

“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 Hodgson, Edward S.

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 Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir