What's the difference between lazy and trifling?

Lazy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Disinclined to action or exertion; averse to labor; idle; shirking work.
  • (superl.) Inactive; slothful; slow; sluggish; as, a lazy stream.
  • (superl.) Wicked; vicious.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The "lazy-T" technique consists of a surgical horizontal and vertical shortening of the involved portion of the lower eyelid.
  • (2) In February last year the BBC was forced to apologise to the Mexican ambassador after a joke made by the three presenters that the nation's cars were like the people "lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat".
  • (3) Extensive research among the Afghan National Army – 68 focus groups – and US military personnel alike concluded: "One group sees the other as a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology; and the other group [the US soldiers] generally views the former as a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous, and murderous radicals.
  • (4) But Shukrallah says groups like Dostour are weak not through laziness but because they were not allowed to develop under Mubarak and his predecessors.
  • (5) Simon Parker, a senior lecturer at the University of York, told the New Statesman that, during the recent dispute over lecturers' pay, his mobile phone number was posted on Facebook, with the instruction to students to give him a call if they felt they had been "fucked over" by the "lazy bastards in the AUT".
  • (6) For every drop shot that was loose, lazy and tossed away a point, there was another that smacked of insouciant brilliance.
  • (7) All Cavendishes are lazy by nature, and my entire life has been a battle against indolence.
  • (8) The logic is transitive and not direct: by “inner cities” Ryan meant black; by describing black men as not “learning” the “value and culture of work” – and since Charles Murray has called poor people “lazy” – Ryan was saying black men were lazy.
  • (9) Even more pointedly, he attacked the common Republican philosophical refuge of the doctrine of unintended consequences, or, as he put it, “We can’t do anything because we don’t yet know everything.” “The bullshitters have gotten pretty lazy,” he said, and the previous six hours of debate coverage on Fox News could have told you as much.
  • (10) I see evidence for this every week when I hear otherwise bright and articulate students justify their political opinions with vague, lazy arguments.
  • (11) In his book Fight the Power , Chuck rails against everything from Hollywood to the sports industry for portraying blacks as 'watermelon stealin', chicken eatin', knee knockin', eye poppin' lazy, crazy, dancin', submissive, Toms.
  • (12) Hate the smoking ban, HS2, Brussels, travellers, burqas, regulation, tax, Boris, debt, windfarms, quangos, foreign aid, crime, Abu Qatada, Muslims, tuition fees, lazy people, asylum seekers, the hunting ban?
  • (13) Perpetuating the myth that DLA prevents disabled people from working just stirs the assertion that disabled people are lazy scroungers, when the truth is that they would like nothing more than to work and contribute like everyone else.
  • (14) Their MPs tend to spend years chipping away at their seats before they win, getting under the skin of places in a way other parties don't, and once elected tend not to get lazy or complacent.
  • (15) David Miliband's heartache at leadership loss revealed in new Hillary Clinton emails Read more Longtime Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal also wrote a number of memos to the secretary of state on American politics, including one describing the current Speaker of the House, John Boehner, as “louche, alcoholic [and] lazy” while predicting that Mitt Romney would run for president on a ticket with former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, whom he compared to Dick Cheney.
  • (16) This weather pushes players to be a bit lazy, to lose a bit of tension, a bit of sharpness, after that you pass slow, you do not react to the second balls, the time goes on and on, then when you wake up, it is half-time.
  • (17) David Ruffley, a Conservative MP on the Treasury select committee, said other risk-taking bankers and lazy regulators should also be examined.
  • (18) John Byrom, a lazy, self-indulgent 18th-century versifier, had three black hedgehogs on his coat of arms.
  • (19) Such curiosity is not a big ask, and demanding such rigorous thinking from tutors seems a much more effective way of getting diverse students into top universities than creating a mythical list of "better" subjects, writing them into the league tables and thereby sanctioning the lazy dismissal of anyone who does not fit the mould.
  • (20) (And the tech, if I wasn’t as lazy, could help me get better at cooking.)

Trifling


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Trifle
  • (a.) Being of small value or importance; trivial; paltry; as, a trifling debt; a trifling affair.

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.