What's the difference between jot and trifle?

Jot


Definition:

  • (n.) An iota; a point; a tittle; the smallest particle. Cf. Bit, n.
  • (v. t.) To set down; to make a brief note of; -- usually followed by down.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) While Pardew restricted his celebrations to jotting some notes on a pad, a young visiting substitute seated behind him offered a study in unrestrained delight.
  • (2) 'The Brazilian spectators howled with laughter....' The miss mattered not a jot in terms of qualification.
  • (3) For several years, Thorn was a full-time parent, not even jotting down lyrics in her notebook.
  • (4) The idea that Britain is made one jot safer by a £100bn Armageddon weapon floating in the Atlantic is absurd.
  • (5) Last year, I jotted down several that had me almost salivating at the prospect of buying them.
  • (6) While Romney speaks, Obama tends to look down at his podium, jotting notes, which doesn't come over too well on television.
  • (7) White admits that he barely knows more than a paragraph's biography of each of them, but he jotted their names down at various points in the recording process.
  • (8) It won't help the cause one jot to say this, but for those of us who came of age in the 1960s, here comes our final right to wrest from the old moral and religious orthodoxy: the right to die as we please.
  • (9) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fact Kenneth MacMillan was a dab hand with the knitting needle, and would jot down knitting patterns and stitch counts on the same scraps of paper that he used for choreographic notes.
  • (10) I inform them that I will be turning up with a set of index cards on which I have jotted down key points, but will not be boring my audience to tears with fiddly slides consisting of flying text, fussy fonts or photo montages.
  • (11) The chap couldn’t recall the name of either of the Scottish leadership contenders and conveyed the distinct impression that, in any case, he cared not a jot.” The response accurately depicts the attitude of the Labour leadership at Westminster to the Scottish party since devolution: “Just send us down your Glasgow and Lanarkshire MPs and keep your mouths shut in the meantime.” Well, as I’m sure they will have noticed by now, Scotland has stopped sending Labour MPs to London… well, apart from wee whatsisname in Edinburgh.
  • (12) Zoom back in on the past decade and it is clear that for all the mounting scientific concern, the political rhetoric and the clean technology, nothing has made a jot of difference to the long-term trend at the global level – the system level.
  • (13) It was a war of choice that has killed tens of thousands of people, while not increasing Britain's security one jot.
  • (14) Such rhetoric is hard to take when the campaign is financed and run in part by people from the Tory party who, going by the current cuts agenda, don't seem to care one jot about public services.
  • (15) As Mr Cowell and Mr Fuller rattled through their idea for an ambitious new show to identify an unknown British singing star, Boyd scribbled notes on two sides of jotting paper during the hour-long meeting.
  • (16) "It would have trampled all over the privacy of innocent people without improving our security one jot."
  • (17) Pfizer's short-term promises about investment in the UK don't matter a jot because the group lives in a perpetual state of reinvention.
  • (18) To describe his work in progress, he jotted down a list of hyperbolic adjectives: "Astounding, extraordinary, surprising, superhuman, supernatural, unheard of, savage, sinister, formidable, gigantic, savage, colossal, monstrous, deformed, disturbed, electrifying, lugubrious, funereal, hideous, terrifying, shadowy, mysterious, fantastic, nocturnal, crepuscular."
  • (19) According to this logic, it matters not a jot how you make your money.
  • (20) The digital age, with its typing and its texting, has left us unable to jot down the simplest of notes with anything like penmanship.

Trifle


Definition:

  • (n.) A thing of very little value or importance; a paltry, or trivial, affair.
  • (n.) A dish composed of sweetmeats, fruits, cake, wine, etc., with syllabub poured over it.
  • (n.) To act or talk without seriousness, gravity, weight, or dignity; to act or talk with levity; to indulge in light or trivial amusements.
  • (v. t.) To make of no importance; to treat as a trifle.
  • (v. t.) To spend in vanity; to fritter away; to waste; as, to trifle away money.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) After a relatively trifling lead exposure they developed the signs of acute lead intoxication.
  • (2) It featured Adam Dalgliesh, the poet-policeman, and he seemed old-fashioned, too, intellectual and a trifle upper-class.
  • (3) So Inter sold him to Real Madrid at the end of the 1995-96 season for the trifling sum of £3.5million - less than they had paid for him.
  • (4) 1.15pm: Dave Espley is not a man to be trifled with: "I'd agree with Steven Gardner regarding the use of video technology for goalline reviews, but I'd go slightly further with regard to the retrospective punishment for cheating.
  • (5) Clementine and dark chocolate trifle (above) This recipe gives classic trifle a zingy twist with clementines and orange blossom; a great make-ahead dinner party dessert.
  • (6) Of course it is the hyperbolic silliness – the make-or-break trifle sponge, custard thefts, and prolonged ruminations over "The Crumb" – that makes The Great British Bake Off so lovable.
  • (7) English friends had explained to me, not without pride, the importance of grumbling to the national character, but I still want to stress to every Londoner I meet that — take it from a visiting Los Angeleno — the tube exists, and that counts as no trifling achievement.
  • (8) But it is a trifle dispiriting even so to hear the education secretary parroting the same lines as his predecessors – even more so for teachers, I guess.
  • (9) This March, the proportions of loans taken by finance and property slumped all the way to a trifling 74.7%, while non-financial firms took a whopping 25.3%.
  • (10) It wasn't a baked Alaska, a fruit tart, a cream-laden trifle or a steamed treacle sponge.
  • (11) If you wish to have only a trifling risk group of 10% of all pregnant women, you can predict right only about 50% of all infants with low birth weight.
  • (12) Bake Off validates the small quiet dramas of the trifling everyday.
  • (13) As in most mutinous them-and-us industrial confrontations it had been simmering for years and then boiled over for what seemed the most trifling of reasons.
  • (14) "And he is at a loss whether to pity a people who take such arrant trifles in good earnest or to envy that happiness which enables a community to discuss them."
  • (15) I try to answer these letters, but compared to the stories I'm hearing, my experience has been trifling - as more than one correspondent has pointed out.
  • (16) With the menswear shows in the capital now on their sixth season, such trifles have their place even in the mainstream world of an Arcadia-owned brand.
  • (17) Some jokey conspiracy theories did the rounds and one YouTube user criticised Hadfield's interpretation of the song as being overly literal (arguably correct, but a trifle harsh, considering).
  • (18) Clegg was the deputy prime minister and would not jeopardise his relationship with the Conservative party over such a trifle.
  • (19) And what would become of my mornings in my little corner and my late nights scanning the TV channels, watching my crime shows, not a trifling thing?
  • (20) But it’s no trifle — especially given the governor’s national ambitions.

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