bagatel

Noun

bagatelle (countable and uncountable, plural bagatelles)

1. A trifle; an insubstantial thing.
   • Sir C. Oh! dear madam, don't ask me, it's a very foolish song—a mere bagatelle.
     Char. Oh! Sir Callaghan, I will admit of no excuse.1782, Charles Macklin, Love a-la-Mode, page 21

   Synonyms:

   bag of shells, bric-a-brac, dicky, dicky-bird, fico, fig, flamfew, flyspeck, minuity, niff-naff

2. A short piece of literature or of instrumental music, typically light or playful in character.
   • One afternoon in 1920. a young pianist sat down in a shuttered room in the capital of defeated Germany and played a Bagatelle by Beethoven.2007, Norman Lebrecht, The Life And Death of Classical Music, page 7
3. (uncountable) A game similar to billiards played on an oblong table with pockets or arches at one end only.
   • For some time they did nothing save box, but at last they went down to the bagatelle room, and played bagatelle for a bit. They marked this advance in civilization by prodding holes in the ceiling with the bagatelle cues, which gave the ceiling the appearance of a cloth target after a Gatling gun...1895, Hugh Legge, “The Repton Club”, in John Matthew Knapp, editor, The Universities and the Social Problem, page 139
4. (uncountable) Any of several smaller wooden tabletop games developed from the original bagatelle in which the pockets are made of pins.

   Synonyms:

   pin bagatelle, hit-a-pin bagatelle, jaw ball

See all 6 meanings of bagatelle