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What is "trivial"

Crossword clues for trivial

trivial
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
trivial
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a small/trivial matter (=a matter that is not important)
▪ Walking out over such a small matter may seem ridiculous.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ It contributed to a revaluation of photographic genres, so that snapshots could no longer be ignored as trivial and irrelevant.
▪ It is not as trivial an achievement as you might imagine.
▪ This latter task was not as trivial as may be supposed in a society where wood and straw huts burnt down regularly.
▪ But they are wrong to see gay marriage as trivial or frivolous.
▪ Interest in food, in warmth, in punishment, soon outstripped a matter as trivial as a fire.
▪ As Goffmann points out these signs have been neglected or disparaged as trivial items.
▪ So doubt is never treated as trivial.
▪ It's definitely tempting to dismiss this peculiar, fledging series as trivial.
most
▪ To meet the target, managers were forced wastefully to expend resources on the most trivial complaints.
▪ But the humans who taught them haven't managed to pick up even the most trivial elements of gorilla-speak.
▪ She could not bear the claustrophobia of the place, which magnified the smallest incidents or most trivial remarks into giant horrors.
▪ There was murder for gain, and for the most trivial and pointless reasons, often for hardly any reason at all.
▪ I used to have a boyfriend who continually confounded me by his ability to remember the most trivial remarks weeks later.
▪ And race difference is, among all the differences which have been used to justify oppression, probably the most trivial.
▪ He gives the same fierce concentration to the most trivial action.
quite
▪ I should say that these errors have all been without exception quite trivial in themselves.
▪ The ten-knot speed of a liner is quite trivial by comparison.
▪ All this is really quite trivial compared to my real concern.
relatively
▪ While the first of the four examples we have quoted seems relatively trivial, the final two have more significance.
▪ Whether unfudgeability is a new principle is a relatively trivial point.
so
▪ Morphological processing is not quite so trivial for a computer as it is for a human.
▪ My favorite dust-ups are when the marital conflict is over something so trivial that you laugh as you retell the story.
▪ Other defects were so trivial as to have no effect.
▪ For the very rich, the tax will be so trivial as to be unnoticed.
▪ Those on the market at the moment are so trivial it is untrue.
▪ I became tired with Ramon and his canvases and drinking and cursing, it all seemed so trivial.
▪ He seemed far too competent for life to catch him out in so trivial a way.
too
▪ Some ideas will be too trivial, some would be impossible to carry out.
▪ He is a man who feels that anything of this mere Earthly sphere is almost too trivial to notice.
▪ The content may be too trivial or too deep for the group, causing embarrassment to the teacher.
▪ Or they marry, and passion dies because they are too trivial to sustain it.
▪ They may consider them too trivial or feel that the police would be able to offer little assistance.
▪ Some crimes are not reported at all, because the victim regards them as too trivial.
▪ No plot is too trivial for him to explore: Gaudy Night.
▪ No internet service is too trivial to demand a password.
■ NOUN
matter
▪ In general they overestimate the amount available and underestimate the time wasted by being fragmented in small amounts on rather trivial matters.
▪ From a human relations point of view, Janet had outsmarted Hazel by refusing to become a victim over a trivial matter.
▪ Having committed himself by revealing defence secrets, such freedom of speech seemed a trivial matter.
▪ Installing and maintaining a Web server is not a trivial matter, however, given the security and administrative issues involved.
▪ In contrast to what he had been fearing, it was a trivial matter.
▪ Our obsession with cleanliness is no trivial matter.
▪ Criminalising them would cover trivial matters, such as neighbours quarrelling over a lawnmower.
▪ A sad little tale it sounded, a trivial matter to consign a soul to perpetual separation.
name
▪ It is the same with science and its trivial names.
▪ Before much was known about the structure, trivial names were the only way to identify compounds.
▪ For the expert in the field, trivial names are short, convenient and an efficient means of communication.
▪ Long live the tried and trusted trivial names!
▪ Where the trivial name is easily remembered by association with shape, the systematic name would kill any enthusiasm.
▪ The point of this is not the trivial name involved, but the fact that I remember it so clearly.
problem
▪ May we never become so wrapped up in our own trivial problems that we forget to care about anyone else.
things
▪ You don't have any time for silly trivial things.
▪ The poet sees in life a truth that gives significance to the otherwise mean and trivial things.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ No, I don't think your question is trivial at all.
▪ She often loses her temper over trivial matters.
▪ The issue of where the peace talks will be held may seem trivial, but to the participants it is very important.
▪ Why waste time watching trivial TV programs?
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And that is one reason why this presidential election is beginning to look so transparent and trivial.
▪ As far as social psychological concepts are concerned, the distinction between universal and particular is not a trivial one.
▪ From a human relations point of view, Janet had outsmarted Hazel by refusing to become a victim over a trivial matter.
▪ Having committed himself by revealing defence secrets, such freedom of speech seemed a trivial matter.
▪ In general they overestimate the amount available and underestimate the time wasted by being fragmented in small amounts on rather trivial matters.
▪ People in them feel liberated from the trivial and the arbitrary.
▪ Some ideas will be too trivial, some would be impossible to carry out.
▪ This is tiny, but not trivial.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Trivial

Trivial \Triv"i*al\, n. One of the three liberal arts forming the trivium. [Obs.]
--Skelton. Wood.

Trivial

Trivial \Triv"i*al\, a. [L. trivialis, properly, that is in, or belongs to, the crossroads or public streets; hence, that may be found everywhere, common, fr. trivium a place where three roads meet, a crossroad, the public street; tri- (see Tri-) + via a way: cf. F. trivial. See Voyage.]

  1. Found anywhere; common. [Obs.]

  2. Ordinary; commonplace; trifling; vulgar.

    As a scholar, meantime, he was trivial, and incapable of labor.
    --De Quincey.

  3. Of little worth or importance; inconsiderable; trifling; petty; paltry; as, a trivial subject or affair.

    The trivial round, the common task.
    --Keble.

  4. Of or pertaining to the trivium.

    Trivial name (Nat. Hist.), the specific name.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
trivial

"ordinary" (1580s); "insignificant, trifling" (1590s), from Latin trivialis "common, commonplace, vulgar," literally "of or belonging to the crossroads," from trivium "place where three roads meet," in transferred use, "an open place, a public place," from tri- "three" (see three) + via "road" (see via). The sense connection is "public," hence "common, commonplace."\n

\nThe earliest use of the word in English was early 15c., a separate borrowing in the academic sense "of the trivium" (the first three liberal arts -- grammar, rhetoric, and logic); from Medieval Latin use of trivialis in the sense "of the first three liberal arts," from trivium, neuter of the Latin adjective trivius "of three roads, of the crossroads." Related: Trivially. For sense evolution to "pertaining to useless information," see trivia.

Wiktionary
trivial

a. 1 ignorable; of little significance or value. 2 commonplace, ordinary. 3 Concerned with or involving trivia. 4 (context biology English) Relating to or designating the name of a species; specific as opposed to generic. 5 (context mathematics English) Of, relating to, or being the simplest possible case. 6 (context mathematics English) self-evident. 7 Pertaining to the trivium. 8 (context philosophy English) Indistinguishable in case of truth or falsity. n. (context obsolete English) Any of the three liberal arts forming the trivium.

Related phrases:
WordNet
trivial

  1. adj. (informal terms) small and of little importance; "a fiddling sum of money"; "a footling gesture"; "our worries are lilliputian compared with those of countries that are at war"; "a little (or small) matter"; "Mickey Mouse regulations"; "a dispute over niggling details"; "limited to petty enterprises"; "piffling efforts"; "giving a police officer a free meal may be against the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction" [syn: fiddling, footling, lilliputian, little, Mickey Mouse, niggling, piddling, piffling, petty, picayune]

  2. obvious and dull; "trivial conversation"; "commonplace prose" [syn: banal, commonplace]

  3. of little substance or significance; "a few superficial editorial changes"; "only trivial objections" [syn: superficial]

  4. concerned with trivialities; "a trivial young woman"; "a trivial mind"

  5. not large enough to consider or notice [syn: insignificant]

Wikipedia
Trivial (film)

Trivial is a 2007 French crime drama film directed by Sophie Marceau and starring Christopher Lambert, Sophie Marceau, and Nicolas Briançon. Written by Marceau, Gianguido Spinelli, and Jacques Deschamps, the film is about a police inspector, struggling with depression following his wife's death, who investigates a suspicious missing person's case at the request of a mysterious woman. Filmed on location in Normandy, France, Trivial is the second feature-length motion picture directed by actress Sophie Marceau.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "trivial".

People think, well, do I want to take my headache to a shrine, have to pay a lot, and risk angering a god for calling him down for my trivial complaint, or do I just want to go and pick up a couple of pills from the allopathist on the corner?

He appealed to the senses, referred entirely to some particular and trivial coincidence, and often put amatory weaknesses under contribution to give it force.

To have been the presiding genius of my own clinic and to have watched my procession of patients, some of them aporetics for a certainty, but many others who improved under my care and gave weight to my Paracelsian notion of the healing art, that was anything but trivial.

The ladies beholding it exclaimed against Clara, even apostrophized her, so dark are trivial errors when circumstances frown.

Now all of those things seemed so trivial compared to the task she had before her, and these men, who were stronger and braver and more honest than any she had ever known, they were looking at her with that same doubt she had borne for all of her life.

He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play.

This poor, simple, innocent, trusting creature, so utterly incapable of coming into any true relation with his aspiring mind, his large and strong emotions,--this mere child, all simplicity and goodness, but trivial and shallow as the little babbling brooklet that ran by his window to the river, to lose its insignificant being in the swift torrent he heard rushing over the rocks,--this pretty idol for a weak and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors!

How dare they, he thought, fight their trivial buttles over which musicians would play at whose ball when four miles away men and women were struggling for their lives against an invisible slayer and the air dripped with the stink of corpses smoke, and death?

Nomarchies, but to Malik, they seemed much like the more trivial mind-tours with which such people amused themselves.

In the early days, when the Metaverse was a featureless black ball, this was a trivial job.

Adams and note his apparent misapprehension of questions that would tend to involve him, and note the apparent failure of his theretofore wonderfully clear and exact memory of the most trivial and unimportant details, I am inclined to reject the whole story as a fabrication that has been punctured and fallen to pieces.

She had sent Donal into the overworld with a few ill-chosen words, never suspecting she could do such a thing, and it was not a trivial matter.

But now she had no time to speculate upon so trivial a thing, for behind her came the sudden clash of arms and she knew that Turan, the panthan, had crossed swords with the first of their pursuers.

Indeed, it seems presumptuous of me even to take up quill and ink for the discussion of such abjectly inconsequential deeds of my own, though admittedly those trivial occurrences did involve a certain level of risk to me.

Should the four Servants agree that Ramus Ymph somehow falls short, perhaps in trivial degree, then Ramus Ymph may not be seated, and the Four must urge another Ymph whom they deem more suitable.