Word.ws English Dictionary

a trifle

a trifle adverb: a little, slightly.

Adverb

a trifle (not comparable)

  1. A little, slightly.
    • Could you lend me some money? I'm a trifle short of what I need to pay the rent.
    • He contemplated the large well-proportioned letters and final flourish, with his head a trifle on one side for an instant […]1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter 23, in Middlemarch […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book III

a trifle meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

a trifle in Tamil

தினை

a trifle in Malayalam

a little, somewhat, a touch
അല്പസ്വല്പം, അസാരം, ഒട്ടൊക്കെ, ഇച്ചിരി, ഇച്ചിര, ഇത്തിരി

Examples of a trifle in a sentence

  • Commander Birch was a trifle uneasy when he found there was more than a popple on the sea; it was, in fact, distinctly choppy.1928, Lawrence R. Bourne, chapter 17, in Well Tackled!:
  • “Maybe we’ll move away towards the west a trifle, and come down on Fiji from the north.”1957, Nevil Shute [pseudonym; Nevil Shute Norway], On the Beach, London: William Heinemann:
  • I know it's out of fashion / And a trifle uncool / But I can't help it / I'm a romantic fool1980, Mark Gane, “Echo Beach”, performed by Martha and the Muffins:

Synonyms of a trifle

19 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Questions about a trifle

What does a trifle mean?
A trifle means a little, slightly.
What is a trifle in Tamil?
A trifle in Tamil is தினை. See A trifle meaning in Tamil.
How do you use a trifle in a sentence?
Commander Birch was a trifle uneasy when he found there was more than a popple on the sea; it was, in fact, distinctly choppy.
What part of speech is a trifle?
A trifle is an adverb.

Words near a trifle in the dictionary

  1. a to z
  2. A to Zs
  3. a ton
  4. a touch
  5. a treat
  6. a trifle
  7. a trouble shared is a trouble halved
  8. a turkey voting for Christmas
  9. a twig in a bundle cannot be broken
  10. a twig in a bundle is unbreakable
  11. a vinculo matrimonii

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: a trifle (page history and authors); a trifle (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); a trifle (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “a trifle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/a_trifle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.