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”).
"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:
2
Commonplace, ordinary.
As a scholar, meantime, he was trivial, and incapable of labour.1842, Thomas De Quincey, “Cicero”, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine:
3
Easy; requiring little skill or effort.
4
Concerned with or involving trivia.
5
Biology, Natural sciences, Taxonomy Relating to or designating the name of a species; specific as opposed to generic.
6
Mathematics, Sciences Of, relating to, or being the simplest possible case.
7
Algebra, Mathematics, Sciences Containing only one element; having an underlying set which is a singleton.
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
Obsolete 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 King Henry the Seventh, Dom. 1500, to the End of the Year 1690. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] Tho[mas] Bennet […]: