trivial

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English

Alternative forms

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).[1]

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈtɹɪv.i.əl/,
  • Audio (US):(file)

Adjective

trivial (comparative more trivial, superlative most trivial)

  1. Ignorable; of little significance or value.
    • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 16, in Vanity Fair , London: Bradbury and Evans , published 1848, →OCLC:
      "All which details, I have no doubt, Jones, who reads this book at his Club, will pronounce to be excessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultra-sentimental."
    • 2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 11:
      In fact, the influence of signage in a certain area may exist anywhere on a continuum from profoundly effective to utterly trivial or completely insignificant, irrespective of the intent motivating the signs.
  2. Commonplace, ordinary.
    • 1842, Thomas De Quincey, “Cicero”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine:
      As a scholar, meantime, he was trivial, and incapable of labour.
  3. Concerned with or involving trivia.
  4. (taxonomy) Relating to or designating the name of a species; specific as opposed to generic.
  5. (mathematics) Of, relating to, or being the simplest possible case.
  6. (mathematics) Self-evident.
  7. Pertaining to the trivium.
  8. (philosophy) Indistinguishable in case of truth or falsity.

Synonyms

Antonyms

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Noun

trivial (plural trivials)

  1. (obsolete) Any of the three liberal arts forming the trivium.
    • c. 1521, John Skelton, Speke Parott:
      Tryuyals, & quatryuyals, ſo ſore now they appayre
      That Parrot the Popagay, hath pytye to beholde
      How the reſt of good lernyng, is roufled vp & trold
    • 1691, [Anthony Wood], Athenæ Oxonienses. An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops who have had Their Education in the Most Ancient and Famous University of Oxford from the Fifteenth Year of King Henry the Seventh, Dom. 1500, to the End of the Year 1690. , volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Tho Bennet :
      St. Edmund was bred in this University in the Trivials and Quadrivials till he was Professor of Arts

References

Further reading

Anagrams

Catalan

Pronunciation

Adjective

trivial m or f (masculine and feminine plural trivials)

  1. trivial

Further reading

French

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin triviālis.

Pronunciation

Adjective

trivial (feminine triviale, masculine plural triviaux, feminine plural triviales)

  1. trivial (common, easy, obvious)
  2. ordinary, mundane, commonplace
    Synonyms: banal, commun, ordinaire
    Antonyms: nouveau, singulier, rare
  3. inelegant, unrefined (especially of a person's language)
    Synonym: inélégant
    Antonym: raffiné
  4. crass, crude, vulgar, obscene (words, language, behavior, etc.)
    Synonyms: brut, grossier, obscène
    Antonyms: courtois, gentil, poli, subtil

Derived terms

Further reading

Anagrams

Galician

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /tɾiˈbjal/
  • Rhymes: -al
  • Hyphenation: tri‧vial

Adjective

trivial m or f (plural triviais)

  1. trivial

Derived terms

German

Etymology

Borrowed from French trivial, from Latin triviālis (common).

Pronunciation

Adjective

trivial (strong nominative masculine singular trivialer, comparative trivialer, superlative am trivialsten)

  1. trivial (common, easy, obvious)

Declension

Further reading

  • trivial” in Duden online
  • trivial” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache

Piedmontese

Adjective

trivial

  1. trivial

Portuguese

Pronunciation

  • (Brazil) IPA(key): /tɾi.viˈaw/ , (faster pronunciation) /tɾiˈvjaw/
 

  • Rhymes: (Portugal) -al, (Brazil) -aw
  • Hyphenation: tri‧vi‧al

Adjective

trivial m or f (plural triviais)

  1. trivial

Derived terms

Noun

trivial m (plural triviais)

  1. (informal) a simple everyday meal

Further reading

  • trivial” in Dicionário Aberto based on Novo Diccionário da Língua Portuguesa de Cândido de Figueiredo, 1913

Romanian

Etymology

Borrowed from French trivial.

Pronunciation

Adjective

trivial m or n (feminine singular trivială, masculine plural triviali, feminine and neuter plural triviale)

  1. common, ordinary
    Synonyms: de rând, comun, obișnuit, ordinar
  2. obscene, indecent
    Synonyms: obscen, indecent

Declension

Derived terms

Spanish

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /tɾiˈbjal/
  • Rhymes: -al
  • Syllabification: tri‧vial

Adjective

trivial m or f (masculine and feminine plural triviales)

  1. trivial
    Synonym: insignificante

Derived terms

Further reading

Swedish

Adjective

trivial (comparative trivialare, superlative trivialast)

  1. trivial

Declension

Inflection of trivial
Indefinite Positive Comparative Superlative2
Common singular trivial trivialare trivialast
Neuter singular trivialt trivialare trivialast
Plural triviala trivialare trivialast
Masculine plural3 triviale trivialare trivialast
Definite Positive Comparative Superlative
Masculine singular1 triviale trivialare trivialaste
All triviala trivialare trivialaste
1) Only used, optionally, to refer to things whose natural gender is masculine.
2) The indefinite superlative forms are only used in the predicative.
3) Dated or archaic

Derived terms

References