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Trivial - Dictionary Definition and Overview |
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Trivial : adj
1: (informal terms) small and of little importance; "a fiddling
sum of money"; "a footling gesture"; "our worries are
lilliputian compared with those of countries that are
at war"; "a little (or small) matter"; "Mickey Mouse
regulations"; "a dispute over niggling details";
"limited to petty enterprises"; "piffling efforts";
"giving a police officer a free meal may be against
the law, but it seems to be a picayune infraction"
[syn: fiddling, footling, lilliputian, little,
Mickey Mouse, niggling, piddling, piffling, petty,
picayune]
2: obvious and dull; "trivial conversation"; "commonplace
prose" [syn: banal, commonplace]
3: of little substance or significance; "a few superficial
editorial changes"; "only trivial objections" [syn: superficial]
4: concerned with trivialities; "a trivial young woman"; "a
trivial mind"
5: not large enough to consider or notice [syn: insignificant]
Based on WordNet 2.0
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Trivial : \Triv"i*al\, a. [L. trivialis, properly, that is in, or
belongs to, the crossroads or public streets; hence, that may
be found everywhere, common, fr. trivium a place where three
roads meet, a crossroad, the public street; tri- (see Tri-)
_ via a way: cf. F. trivial. See Voyage.]
1. Found anywhere; common. [Obs.]
2. Ordinary; commonplace; trifling; vulgar.
As a scholar, meantime, he was trivial, and
incapable of labor. --De Quincey.
3. Of little worth or importance; inconsiderable; trifling;
petty; paltry; as, a trivial subject or affair.
The trivial round, the common task. --Keble.
4. Of or pertaining to the trivium.
Trivial name (Nat. Hist.), the specific name.
Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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Trivial : \Triv"i*al\, n.
One of the three liberal arts forming the trivium. [Obs.]
--Skelton. Wood.
Based on Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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TRIVIAL. Of small importance. It is a rule in equity that a demurrer will
lie to a bill on the ground of the triviality of the matter in dispute, as
being below the dignity of the court. 4 Bouv. Inst. n. 4237. See Hopk. R.
112; 4 John. Ch. 183; 4 Paige, 364.
Based on Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [Bouvier_Law_Dictionary]:
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Trivial : adj. 1. Too simple to bother detailing. 2. Not worth the
speaker's time. 3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known that
anyone not utterly cretinous would have thought of them already. 4.
Any problem one has already solved (some claim that hackish `trivial'
usually evaluates to `I've seen it before'). Hackers' notions of
triviality may be quite at variance with those of non-hackers. See
nontrivial, uninteresting.
The physicist Richard Feynman, who had the hacker nature to an amazing
degree (see his essay "Los Alamos Based on Below" in "Surely You're Joking,
Mr. Feynman!"), defined `trivial theorem' as "one that has already been
proved".
Based on Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856) [Bouvier_Law_Dictionary]:
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