What's the difference between trifle and trivial?

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.

Trivial


Definition:

  • (n.) One of the three liberal arts forming the trivium.
  • (a.) Found anywhere; common.
  • (a.) Ordinary; commonplace; trifling; vulgar.
  • (a.) Of little worth or importance; inconsiderable; trifling; petty; paltry; as, a trivial subject or affair.
  • (a.) Of or pertaining to the trivium.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The case of a 32-year-old man who suffered a blow to his left supraorbital region and eyebrow in an automatic closing door is reported to draw attention to the uncommon but trivial nature of this injury which may result in profound visual loss.
  • (2) Governmental regulations, requirements, and standards have improved the quality of many laboratories' work, but also result in greatly increased costs, excesses of often trivial procedures, and diversion of trained manpower from clinical service to regulatory procedures, with a resulting increase in manpower needs.
  • (3) Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter.
  • (4) While they might technically have been denied a majority in that scenario, making up the two missing seats would have been trivial.
  • (5) We have shown that patients with chronic airflow obstruction (CAO) complain of disabling dyspnea when performing seemingly trivial tasks with unsupported arms.
  • (6) Given the documented sensitivity of chest radiography in this respect, we conclude that any increase in extravascular lung water during exercise must be trivial.
  • (7) schizophrenia), the underestimation of prevalence by the proband method may be non-trivial.
  • (8) They range from relatively trivial conditions such as oral and genital thrush to fatal, systemic superinfections in patients who are already seriously ill with other diseases.
  • (9) Snoring usually is trivial and unimportant, but it can turn into a social or medical problem.
  • (10) To the sensitization and the sensitine production the following type strains (Trudeau Institute Saranac Lake) were used: M. avium, M. borstelense, M.chelonei, M. flavescens, M. fortuitum, M. gastri, M. gordonae, M.kansaii, M. marinum, M nonchromogenicum, M. phlei, M. scrofulaceum, M. smegmatis, M. terrae, M. triviale and M. bovis strain Vallee as well as M. intracellulare serotyp Davis ATCC 23435.
  • (11) Cardiovascular sequelae were generally trivial at all doses.
  • (12) Previous studies have indicated that suppression is mediated by "null cells" similar to natural suppressor (NS) cells (1), and have ruled out several possible trivial explanations for the suppressive effect.
  • (13) Since the biosynthetic route is similar to that of lipoxin A4 and lipoxin B4, we suggest the trivial names lipoxin C4, D4 and E4.
  • (14) This polysaccharide has been given the trivial name marginalan.
  • (15) Rupture of the bridging veins or the intratumoral abnormal vessels due to twisting of the brain from trivial head trauma or without trauma might produce subdural hematoma.
  • (16) Five patients had normal intracardiac hemodynamic values, 2 had trivial atrioventricular valve regurgitation and 1 patient had trivial pulmonary ventricular outflow tract obstruction.
  • (17) Six weeks later, two weeks after a trivial trauma with hyperextension of the shoulder joint, it was found that the catheter had broken and its tip portion had embolized into the pulmonary artery: it was retrieved without difficulty via the femoral vein.
  • (18) The results indicate that dichromatic and trichromatic monkeys differ only trivially on tests where performance is based on the contributions of non-opponent mechanisms, that the contribution of spectrally opponent mechanisms to the "brightness signal" is very similar in trichromatic and dichromatic monkeys, and that in increment-threshold discriminations where there are both chromaticity and luminance cues some test wavelengths yield superior performance for trichromats while others appear to favor the dichromat.
  • (19) Thus, the same tribunal that regularly consigns ordinary, powerless Americans to prison for decades for even trivial offenses yet again acts to protect the most powerful actors from any consequences for serious crimes: that is the US justice system in a nutshell.
  • (20) The appetite was selective as shown by the fact that when, after depletion, 0.34 M-CaCl2 was offered (which is equiosmotic to 3% NaCl) pigeons took just a trivial amount of it.