What's the difference between trifle and wanton?

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.

Wanton


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Untrained; undisciplined; unrestrained; hence, loose; free; luxuriant; roving; sportive.
  • (v. t.) Wandering from moral rectitude; perverse; dissolute.
  • (v. t.) Specifically: Deviating from the rules of chastity; lewd; lustful; lascivious; libidinous; lecherous.
  • (v. t.) Reckless; heedless; as, wanton mischief.
  • (n.) A roving, frolicsome thing; a trifler; -- used rarely as a term of endearment.
  • (n.) One brought up without restraint; a pampered pet.
  • (n.) A lewd person; a lascivious man or woman.
  • (v. i.) To rove and ramble without restraint, rule, or limit; to revel; to play loosely; to frolic.
  • (v. i.) To sport in lewdness; to play the wanton; to play lasciviously.
  • (v. t.) To cause to become wanton; also, to waste in wantonness.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We simply do whatever nature needs and will work with anyone that wants to help wildlife.” His views might come as a surprise to some of the RSPB’s 1.1 million members, who would have been persuaded by its original pledge “to discourage the wanton destruction of birds”; they would equally have been a surprise to the RSPB’s detractors in the shooting world.
  • (2) He pointed out that the eighth amendment of the US constitution “prohibits the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain through torture, barbarous methods, or methods resulting in a lingering death”.
  • (3) The real offense, for which no one has been charged, is the wanton disregard for human life that Manning exposed.
  • (4) We’re back to those flappers, with their jobs and their knee-length skirts and their dangerous opinions about politics, or the girls of the 1960s destroying the traditional family by wantonly taking the pill.
  • (5) Long said: "This is not an attack on an individual or on a party, but a wanton attack on the democratic process.
  • (6) In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction.
  • (7) The wanton slaughter of two dozen civilians in Haditha, Iraq and the severe and even lethal torture of Afghan detainees generated, at worst, shockingly short jail time for the killers and, usually, little more than letters of reprimand.
  • (8) What distinguishes games from books, or films, is that the dodgy sexual politics and wanton violence of one is used as a stick to bash them all.
  • (9) "The president commiserates with all the families who lost loved ones in the heinous attacks and extends his heartfelt sympathies to all those who suffered injuries or lost their properties during the wanton assaults on Bauchi and Kaduna States," said a statement.
  • (10) But that doesn't mean that halting and reversing the wanton growth of shorthaul flights is an act of class war.
  • (11) Here in Bristol we could use the old railway lines that used to thread their way into the city, before Beeching and Marples ripped them up – another example of wanton government lack of foresight.
  • (12) To the contrary, they are the inevitable by-products of societies that recruit every institution in service of defending even the most wanton abuses by the state.
  • (13) Later at university, there were nice Protestant ladies and wanton atheists; taxpayer-funded Guinness and Spear of Destiny .
  • (14) Three hours of sexual and pharmacological excess, wanton debauchery, unfathomable avarice, gleeful misogyny, extreme narcotic brinksmanship, malfeasance and lawless behaviour is a lot to take, and some have complained of the film's relentlessness, which, if understood in formal terms, I think may be one of its main aims.
  • (15) Humankind must become accountable on a massive scale for the wanton destruction of our collective home.
  • (16) Young children were expected to carry out gruelling domestic chores and were wantonly punished, she says.
  • (17) An influential Communist party journal has compared online rumours to Cultural Revolution-style denunciations and warned of the need to curb "wanton defamation" of authority, as China intensifies its campaign to control social media.
  • (18) What we are seeing in London tonight, the wanton vandalism, smashing of windows, has nothing to do with peaceful protest."
  • (19) On the periphery of all the wanton lust and questionable puns stands Evie (Antonia Thomas), who’s pretty, sweet and has a camera; the holy trinity for chumps like Dylan.
  • (20) Following release of the Mosul video showing wanton destruction of antiquities, there has been a lot of email traffic between Libyans working in archaeology and Arab-world representatives on the major international heritage bodies,” said David Mattingly, a professor at the University of Leicester, who has spent years excavating Roman ruins in Libya.