Trivials

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Insignificant or minor matters that lack importance or substance
2. Referring to things that are commonplace or easily disregarded due to their lack of significance
3. Describing issues or topics that are considered unimportant or of little consequence in a broader context

Etymology: The plural "trivials" is simply the noun form of "trivial," and the adjective's story is the more surprising one. It comes from Latin "triviālis," meaning "appropriate to the street-corner, commonplace, vulgar," built on "trivium," a "place where three roads meet." A crossroads was a busy, public spot, and the Latin adjective carried that sense of the everyday and unrefined. The meaning drifted toward "unimportant" through academic life. In medieval education, the "trivium" was the lower division of the liberal arts, grammar, logic and rhetoric, set against the "quadrivium," the higher division of geometry, astronomy, arithmetic and music. The lower subjects were treated as basic and less weighty, and that sense of being elementary gradually became the sense of being of little consequence.

Synonyms: trifles, minutiae, details, insignificances, petty matters

Antonyms: essentials, important matters, significances, fundamentals, major issues