Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Unworthy of serious attention; trivial.
- adjective Inappropriately silly.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Of little weight, worth, or importance; not worth notice; slight; trifling; trivial: as, a frivolous argument; a frivolous objection or pretext.
- Given to trifling; characterized by unbecoming levity; silly; weak.
- Specifically, in law, so clearly insufficient as to need no argument to show its weakness: as, a frivolous answer or plea.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of little weight or importance; not worth notice; slight.
- adjective Given to trifling; marked with unbecoming levity; silly; interested especially in trifling matters.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
Silly , especially at aninappropriate time or in aninappropriate manner. - adjective Of little weight or
importance ; not worthnotice ;slight .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective not serious in content or attitude or behavior
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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ANDERSON: Well, as I pointed out earlier, you know, most meals are eaten at home and these lawsuits really do give the term frivolous a bad name.
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In the months leading up to her July resignation as Alaska governor, her legal bills had mounted to more than $500,000, fueled mostly by what she called frivolous ethics complaints.
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Now recall, Wolf, that when Palin announced that she's stepping down, she cited, in part, the endless ethics complaints against her, which she called frivolous and she said that the legal bills were more than $500,000.
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Palin has said one of the reasons she's stepping down is because of what she called frivolous ethics complaints by political operatives descending on Alaska.
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Palin has said one of the reasons she's stepping down is because of what she called frivolous ethics complaints by political operatives descending on Alaska.
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Some of his other pet issues including what he calls frivolous lawsuits.
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The president spoke today in Detroit, Michigan, about asbestos litigation and the need to limit what he called frivolous lawsuits.
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I'm worried about the -- what I call frivolous lawsuits that make it hard for docs to practice medicine and run up the cost of medicine.
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She said she resigned her governorship because she ran up $500,000 in debt defending herself against what she called frivolous claims.
The Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines - washingtonpost.com 2011
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And that, my friends, is what we call a frivolous lawsuit.
Forbes.com: News Victoria Pynchon 2011
mohitanand commented on the word frivolous
not serious in content or attitude or behavior
Compared to Juliet's passionate concern for human rights, Jake's non-stop concern about football seems somewhat frivolous.
October 12, 2016