a. [f. TRITE a., with play on critical.] Of a trite or commonplace character.
1709. Swift (title), A Tritical Essay upon the faculties of the mind.
1762. [see TRITICALLY].
1841. D’Israeli, Amen. Lit. (1867), 285. To sermonise with a tedious homily or a tritical declamation.
1869. Contemp. Rev., X. 125. To have every book of the Bible dealt with … with the same tendency to ‘tritical’ reflections.
Hence Triticality, Tritically adv., Triticalness; so Triticism (after criticism; cf. also witticism).
1835. Carlyle, in Corr. Carlyle & Emerson, 13 May (1883), I. 71. Our Ex-Chancellor has been promulgating *triticalities … against the Aristocracy.
1762. Sterne, Tr. Shandy, VI. xi. ’Tis all tritical, and most *tritically put together.
c. 1714. Pope, etc., Mem. M. Scriblerus, vii. A *Triticalness or Mediocrity in the Thought.
1824. Scott, Redgauntlet, Let. xii. Weary, flat, and stale *triticism.
