Learn English – “Death comes in threes” origin

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With David Bowie and Alan Rickman dying within a few days on each other (RIP), I've heard some people say, "Death always comes in threes, I wonder who's next."

What is the origin of this phrase? How did this confirmation bias come about?

Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.

I'm just interested to know how did this phrase came into use.

Best Answer

The fact that the number "three" is a source of superstition is based on a number of different reasons and is generally referred to as "Triaphilia". I think that "death comes in three" is just a superstition based on the same concepts:

  • The tendency to want to hold on to the three connection is strong in many areas of life.

    • One reason might be a sort of number mysticism. Three is the first odd prime number, the triangle is a stable shape, in our base 10 system, the fraction 1/3 is .3333333…, et cetera.

    • A second more compelling reason might be psychological, perhaps deriving from the structure and limited complexity of our brains.

    • The appeal of the trinity in Christianity and other religions, the philosophical triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and even the setup of many jokes seem to stem in part from a natural resonance with the number three. (A priest, a minister and a rabbi go into a bar and ..., or a physicist, an engineer and a mathematician are asked how to … .)

(abcnews.go.com)

There are a few early instances of the expression in the 30's but usage appears to be more frequent from the mid 60's, Ngram. It might be just a variant of the more common "bad things come in threes", Ngram.

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