trivial
/ˈtɹɪv.i.əl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.66 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Ignorable; of little significance or value.
adj
adj
Relating to or designating the name of a species; specific as opposed to generic.
adj
Example Sentences
- ""All which details, I have no doubt, Jones, who reads this book at his Club, will pronounce to be excessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultra-sentimental.""
- "In fact, the influence of signage in a certain area may exist anywhere on a continuum from profoundly effective to utterly trivial or completely insignificant, irrespective of the intent motivating the signs."
- "As a scholar, meantime, he was trivial, and incapable of labour."
- "Tryuyals, & quatryuyals, ſo ſore now they appayre That Parrot the Popagay, hath pytye to beholde How the reſt of good lernyng, is roufled vp & trold"
- "St. Edmund was bred in this University in the Trivials and Quadrivials till he was Professor of Arts"
Etymology
PIE word *tréyes * From Latin triviālis (“appropriate to the street-corner, commonplace, vulgar”), from trivium (“place where three roads meet”). Compare trivium, trivia. * From the distinction between trivium (“the lower division of the liberal arts; grammar, logic and rhetoric”) and quadrivium (“the higher division of the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages, composed of geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music”).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: triviālis
Usage
Inflected Forms
more trivial (comparative)
most trivial (superlative)
triviall (alternative, obsolete)
trivials (plural)