trivial
/ˈtɹɪv.i.əl/
trivial adjective: ignorable; of little significance or value.
Adjective
trivial (comparative more trivial, superlative most trivial)
- Ignorable; of little significance or value.
- "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."1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 16, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
- 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.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
- Synonyms:
- ignorable, negligible, trifling, frothy, Lilliputian
- Commonplace, ordinary.
- As a scholar, meantime, he was trivial, and incapable of labour.1842, Thomas De Quincey, “Cicero”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
- Easy; requiring little skill or effort.
- Concerned with or involving trivia.
- Relating to or designating the name of a species; specific as opposed to generic.
- Of, relating to, or being the simplest possible case.
- Containing only one element; having an underlying set which is a singleton.
- Self-evident.
- Pertaining to the trivium.
- Indistinguishable in case of truth or falsity.
Noun
trivial (plural trivials)
- Any of the three liberal arts forming the trivium.
- Tryuyals, & quatryuyals, ſo ſore now they appayre
That Parrot the Popagay, hath pytye to beholde
How the reſt of good lernyng, is roufled vp & troldc. 1521, John Skelton, Speke Parott - St. Edmund was bred in this University in the Trivials and Quadrivials till he was Professor of Arts1691, [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...
- Tryuyals, & quatryuyals, ſo ſore now they appayre
trivial meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
trivial in Hindi
- of little significance or value
- नगण्य nagaṇya, तुच्छ tucch
- common, ordinary
- सामान्य sāmānya, साधारण sādhāraṇ
trivial in Tamil
- of little significance or value
- உப்பு பெறாத uppu peṟāta
trivial in Marathi
- trivial, insignificant
- क्षुल्लक kṣullak
- trivial, pointless, empty, idle
- वायफळ vāyphaḷ
trivial in Urdu
- of little significance or value
- اَدْنیٰ adnā
More languagesFewer languages
- trivial in Bengali
- অকিঞ্চিৎ okincit, অকিঞ্চিৎকর okincitkor, ছোট
- trivial in Malayalam
- നിസ്സാര nissāra, സാധാരണ sādhāraṇa
- trivial in Kannada
- ಕ್ಷುಲ್ಲಕ kṣullaka
- trivial in Gujarati
- તુચ્છ
- trivial in Assamese
- সৰু xoru
- trivial in Nepali
- तुच्छ
- trivial in Arabic
- تافِه tāfih
Examples of trivial in a sentence
- Substantive editing is never trivial, whereas some aspects of copyediting are trivial.
- Right-minded people do not throw away their lives because trivial insults occur.
- She is very whiny; she keeps complaining about trivial things.
Synonyms of trivial
Antonyms
Forms of trivial
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more trivial |
| superlative | most trivial |
| alternative form (obsolete) | triviall |
| Noun | |
| plural | trivials |
Origin of trivial
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”).
Words formed from trivial
- isotrivial
- non-trivial
- nontrivial
- quasitrivial
- semitrivial
- supertrivial
- trivia
- trivial absolute value
- trivial functional dependency
- trivial group
- trivialisation
- trivialise
- trivialism
- trivialist
- trivialistic
- triviality
- trivialization
- trivialize
- trivially
- trivial name
- trivialness
- trivial solution
- trivial topology
- untrivial
Phrases with trivial
Questions about trivial
- What does trivial mean?
- Trivial means ignorable; of little significance or value.
- What is trivial in Hindi?
- Trivial in Hindi is नगण्य (nagaṇya), तुच्छ (tucch), सामान्य (sāmānya). See Trivial meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is trivial?
- Trivial can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce trivial?
- Trivial is pronounced /ˈtɹɪv.i.əl/.
Words near trivial in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: trivial (page history and authors); क्षुल्लक (Marathi) (page history and authors); অকিঞ্চিৎ (Bengali) (page history and authors); ಕ್ಷುಲ್ಲಕ (Kannada) (page history and authors); trivial (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); সৰু (Assamese) (page history and authors); trivial (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model 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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-trivial.ogg.
Cite this entry: “trivial.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trivial. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.