How common is "thrice"?

Our proofreader, a native speaker of American English, just won't let me use this word. Every single time I try to sneak it onto one of our sites, she replaces it with three times. Now, I do realize that thrice is quirky, but how quirky is it really? Is it awfully archaic? Is there a chance that native speakers won't understand it at all?

I know I could just search a corpus or five, but I don't feel like looking at cold stats (or the Wiktionary usage notes, for that matter). Instead, I am asking members of this community for their very personal, highly subjective, extremely biased opinions.

Solution 1:

Thrice is somewhat common in America, but is generally considered pretentious.

Sometimes it’s used in a quirky sense by regular folks, but as Flotsam related, thrice is used throughout the older translations of the Bible. So many Americans may not use or understand it outside of that context.

Solution 2:

The only instance I can think of when someone used thrice on TV was when Mr. Burns, who is often portrayed using out-of-date language, uses the word thrice in this passage:

All right, Simpson, let’s go over the signals. If I tug the bill of my cap like so, it means the signal is a fake. However, I can take that off by dusting my hands thusly. If I want you to bunt, I will touch my belt buckle not once, not twice, but thrice. If I tug this here. . . .

This is intentionally used by the writers because it sounds funny to the viewers, even though they understand it. I’d say that in Canadian English for sure, and in all the American English I've heard on TV and in person, people generally don’t use the word thrice.

Oxford Dictionaries Online says that thrice is

chiefly formal or literary

And Google n-grams shows that twice is far more popular than two times and "three times" is far more popular than thrice.

Solution 3:

Thrice can be used but should be followed by a word. For example, thrice married, thrice divorced, etc. You should not say something like: "I had to go to the store thrice." The proper way is three times.

Solution 4:

A New York Times search reveals it is fairly common in the US. I also tried with the Guardian (a UK paper) and with Australian and Indian papers. It is fairly common — in my opinion.

Solution 5:

In fundamentalist Christian circles, thrice is relatively common.

I hear or read the phrase thrice holy in reference to God probably three times a year. I go to church about three times a week.

I never hear or read it outside of that context.