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trivial

adj
/ˈtɹɪv.i.əl/

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”).

  1. derived from triviālis

Definitions

  1. Ignorable

    Ignorable; of little significance or value.

    • "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.

  2. Commonplace, ordinary.

    • As a scholar, meantime, he was trivial, and incapable of labour.

  3. Concerned with or involving trivia.

  4. ›+ 6 more definitions

    1. Relating to or designating the name of a species

      Relating to or designating the name of a species; specific as opposed to generic.

    2. Of, relating to, or being the simplest possible case.

    3. Self-evident.

    4. Pertaining to the trivium.

    5. Indistinguishable in case of truth or falsity.

    6. Any of the three liberal arts forming the trivium.

      • 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

The neighborhood

Derived

nontrivial, trivia, trivial absolute value, trivial functional dependency, trivial group, triviality, trivially, trivial name, trivial solution, trivial topology

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at trivial. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01trivial02commonplace03commonly04rule05guideline06determining07determinative08semantic

A definitional loop anchored at trivial. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

8 hops · closes at trivial

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA