trivial

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Of little importance or value.

   Don't waste your time arguing over such trivial details.

2. 2
   adj

   Concerned with unimportant or shallow things.

   Their conversation was trivial and quickly forgotten.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Trivial derives from Latin trivium, “a place where three roads meet.” In medieval universities the trivium was the basic course in grammar, rhetoric, and logic, so the earliest English uses referred to elementary learning; “commonplace” and “unimportant” developed in the late 16th century as medieval scholarship lost prestige. Trivia is the Latin plural of trivium and entered English in the early 20th century.

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”).

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