TRIVIALITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Triviality

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/trˌɪviˈæləti/ Listen

noun

Triviality n. (pl. trivialities)

The quality or state of being trivial; trivialness.

That which is trivial; a trifle. "The philosophy of our times does not expend itself in furious discussions on mere scholastic trivialities."

See images of 'Triviality'

Etymology of 'Triviality'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Triviality" Quotes from Famous Books

... considerable harmonic boldness. After some reminiscent appearances of the introductory horn-call, a long-sustained dominant note introduces the second theme which seems a bit cloying, to be sure, but is just suited to the melting tone-color of the clarinet. The closing theme borders on triviality; the Exposition ends, however, with some exceedingly brilliant improvisations on the rhythmic figure of the main theme. The following Development is rather flimsy and we need expend upon it no critical powder. Weber was a great colorist but not a great architect. ...

— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... but also because he was a man whose glowing hatred of all injustice and sympathy for all suffering never evaporated in empty words. His fine literary perception enabled him to detect the genuine excellence which underlay the superficial triviality of Crabbe's verses. He discovered the genius where men like North and Shelburne might excusably see nothing but the mendicant versifier; and a benevolence still rarer than his critical ability forbade ...

— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... closing to add force to your words by tones and gestures that emphasize ideas of the contrast in weights between the two sides of the scale. By your light tone you can indicate the triviality of objections to your proposition. With the heavier tone of power you can suggest the great weight of the favorable ideas. If you use broad gestures of your whole hand and full arm, you can seem to pile a large heap of points on your side of the scale. Conversely ...

— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... cold in a drive through the cool air; and then, as old fellows do, we bantered each other about our ages, each claiming to be older than the other, and the kind, sweet young girl sat listening with that tolerance of youth for the triviality of age which is so charming. When he could do no more, he said he was sorry, and wished me luck, and drove on; and I being by this time tired with my three miles' tramp, took advantage of a wayside farmhouse, the first in all the distance, and went in and ...

— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... trouble us only when we have stripped him of his last rag of pretension and touched through to the quick of his vanity with the realization of his apprehended foolishness. Literature will have failed humanity if it is so blinded by the monstrous agony in Flanders as to miss the essential triviality at the head of the present war. Not the slaughter of ten million men can make the quality of the German Kaiser ...

— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

More quotes...