trivial

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: B2 — Upper-Intermediate

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

  1. adjective (informal) small and of little importance
  2. adjective of little substance or significance
  3. adjective concerned with trivialities

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”).

In classic literature

Synonyms

fiddling, footling, lilliputian, little, niggling, piddling, piffling, petty, picayune

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