The aim of the present paper is to study the wave propagation in anisotropic viscoelastic medium in the context of the theory threephase-lag model of thermoelasticity. It is found that there exist two quasi-longitudinal waves (qP1, qP2) and two transverse waves (qS1, qS2). The governing equations for homogeneous transversely isotropic thermoviscoelastic are reduced as a special case from the considered model. Different characteristics of waves like phase velocity, attenuation coefficient, specific loss and penetration depth are computed from the obtained results. Viscous effect is shown graphically on different resulting quantities for two-phase-lag model and three-phase-lag model of thermoelasticity. Some particular cases of interest are also deduced from the present investigation.