a three-pronged fork

The general opted for a swift retreat because he saw his troops were vastly outnumbered.

She feels she should fit right in, charming the populace on the wheels of steel. 'Music is my lover,' she is fond of saying. She's looking for a universal groove, something that everyone can, somehow, in whatever small way, relate to.

[…] Mr. [John Walking] Stewart used to observe, that the deplorable effect of too much book learning is to deprive man of self-examination, through an over-stuffed memory, which prevents the exercise of the faculties of imagination, judgment, and reflection, and to make conscience depend on the will of others, and not on self-knowledge; […]