Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of little significance or value.
- adjective Concerned with or involving unimportant matters; superficial.
- adjective Of, relating to, or being the solution of an equation in which every variable is equal to zero.
- adjective Of, relating to, or being the simplest possible case; self-evident.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Such as may be found everywhere; commonplace; ordinary; vulgar.
- Trifling; insignificant; of little worth or importance; paltry.
- Occupying one's self with trifles; trifling.
- Of or pertaining to the trivium, or the first three liberal arts—grammar, rhetoric, and logic; hence, initiatory; rudimentary.
- In zoology and botany: Common; popular; vernacular; not technical: noting the popular or familiar names of animals or plants, as distinguished from the technical New Latin names.
- Specific; not generic: noting what used to be called the nomen triviale—that is, the second or specific term in the binomial technical name of an animal or a plant, such terms being often adopted or adapted from a popular name or epithet.
- In echinoderms, specifically, of or pertaining to the trivium: as, the trivial (anterior) ambulacra of a sea-urchin.
- noun One of the three liberal arts which constitute the trivium.
- noun A coefficient or other quantity not containing the quantities of the set considered.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete One of the three liberal arts forming the trivium.
- adjective obsolete Found anywhere; common.
- adjective Ordinary; commonplace; trifling; vulgar.
- adjective Of little worth or importance; inconsiderable; trifling; petty; paltry.
- adjective Of or pertaining to the trivium.
- adjective (Nat. Hist.) the specific name.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Of little significance or value.
- adjective
Common ,ordinary . - adjective Concerned with or involving
trivia . - adjective biology Relating to or designating the name of a
species ; specific as opposed to generic. - adjective mathematics Of, relating to, or being the simplest possible case.
- adjective mathematics
Self-evident . - adjective Pertaining to the
trivium . - adjective philosophy Indistinguishable in case of truth or falsity.
- noun obsolete Any of the
three liberal arts forming thetrivium .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective concerned with trivialities
- adjective of little substance or significance
- adjective (informal) small and of little importance
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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During one Sen.te meeting on the immigration legislation, he attacked Sen. John Cornyn of Texas for raising what he characterized as trivial objections to a compromise being worked out with the White House.
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"I've come to the conclusion that it's a deliberate tactic," he said, citing several examples of what he calls "trivial" denials.
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Fund then compared what he called the "trivial number" of 108 voters with the 1,420 military ballots that were rejected statewide, ignoring the other 996 who were eligible but were denied the right to vote.
Crooks and Liars Heather 2011
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Mr. Weinberg noted that the core inflation rate, which strips out volatile prices, is just 0.9 per cent on an annual basis, which he calls "trivial."
The Globe and Mail - Home RSS feed Michael Babad 2011
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Mr Madhi escaped from Iran in February 2008 after being sentenced to 73 years in jail for what he described as a trivial charge.
Latest Articles 2010
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The though of someone deciding to send my innocent 6 year old girl to a reform school for something so trivial is infuriating.
School Suspends Six-Year-Old Boy For Bringing Folding Silverware to Lunch 2009
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The though of someone deciding to send my innocent 6 year old girl to a reform school for something so trivial is infuriating.
School Suspends Six-Year-Old Boy For Bringing Folding Silverware to Lunch 2009
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I'm not sure we have any comparative advantage, for example, in trivial feats in software design or education - aren't we off-shoring software jobs because other countries have relatively good software designers as a result of their relatively good educational systems?
Where Can America Compete?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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Notice that the characters don't interact with each other on the basis of their politics - the characters interact with each other on the basis of soap opera motivations (who's having sex with whom, who's been a college buddy of whom, who's trying to show whom up in trivial ways, who dresses like whom, who likes to drink what kind of booze, etc).
A young reader discovers the meaning of paranoia in the political novels of Allen Drury 2009
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Every political battle these days, no matter how trivial, is a fight to the death with no quarter given. viagra Says:
Matthew Yglesias » Bruce Bartlett Struggles in Vain Against Stupidity 2009
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