We find in a work from 1432-50 mention of the 'arte trivialle,' an allusion to the three liberal arts that made up the trivium, the lower division of the seven liberal arts taught in medieval universities-grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Word History: The word trivial entered Middle English with senses quite different from its most common contemporary ones. What is picayune is of negligible value or importance: 'Everything was numbers-oriented-better to close out thirty-five picayune cases than go after two quality ones' (Selwyn Raab). Petty usually refers to what is of minor or lesser significance: 'Religious slurs, temper tantrums, insults, coercion, debt: all petty things, really, irritants-too minor, it would seem, to move five reasonable people to murder' (Donna Tartt). Paltry describes what falls so far short of what is required or desired that it arouses contempt: 'The mere fact of grave issues in life depending on such paltry things is monstrously ludicrous' (George Gissing). 'Now he was smitten with compunction, yet irritated that so trifling an omission should be stored up against him after nearly two years of marriage' (Edith Wharton). Trivial and trifling refer to what is so insignificant as to be utterly commonplace or unremarkable: 'Both sides appreciated that behind this apparently trivial matter of naval salutes lay weighty issues of sovereignty at sea' (Simon Schama). These adjectives all apply to what is unimportant and of little consequence. The modern English trivia is New Latin, being the neuter plural of trivius, but its meaning “unimportant things, trifles, trivialities” is influenced by triviality and dates only from the beginning of the 20th century.Synonyms: trivial, trifling, paltry, petty, picayune

Trivia is a word in Latin, the (neuter) plural of trivium “crossroads, intersection,” and the feminine singular of the adjective trivius “pertaining to a trivium ” (especially used as an epithet of the goddess Diana). Regarded as a three-part deity, Diana has been known by various names, including Diana Trivia and simply Trivia.

The equivalent of Hecate in Roman mythology is Diana (especially one of Diana’s multiple personae). In Greek mythology, Hecate, who is associated with the moon and the netherworld, presides over (three-way) crossroads, doorways, magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and sorcery, and is mentioned as such by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, and Macbeth. The Latin adjective triviālis, “pertaining to a crossroads or to public streets common, vulgar, ordinary,” is a derivative of the classical Latin noun trivium meaning “the place where three roads meet, crossroads, intersection,” also “the street corner, the gutter (where bad character and manners are formed, and boys and young men ruined),” and finally the place sacred to the goddess Hecate. This Medieval Latin sense of trivium dates from the Carolingian Renaissance of the late 8th century at the court of Charlemagne. He was playing the usual, common, “trivial” sense of trivial, “insignificant,” against its original English sense “pertaining to the trivium,” trivium being the first three of the seven liberal arts in the medieval university curriculum: (Latin) grammar, (Latin) rhetoric, and logic, so called because these subjects formed the “triple road to eloquence” ( triplex via ad eloquentiam ). They are quadrivial” is one of James Joyce’s innumerable puns.

Trivial synonym