[f. L. type *triviālitāt-em, f. triviālis TRIVIAL; cf. F. trivialité (Cotgr., 1611), It. triuialità (Florio, 1598), Sp. trivialidad, Pg. trivialidade: see -ITY.]
1. The quality of being trivial; commonplace or trifling character.
1598. Florio, Triuialità, homelines, triuiality.
1757. The Constitution, No. II. 35. How would a little Invention have added to the Triviality of laughing?
1800. Wordsw., Lyrical Ballads (ed. 2), I. Pref. xiii. I cannot be insensible of the present outcry against the triviality and meanness both of thought and language, which some of my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical compositions.
1801. The Monitor; or Delaware Federalist, 8 Aug., 2/4. The truly great spurns them with sovereign contempt—they exist only in minds doomed to triviality.
1817. Coleridge, Biog. Lit., 106. My severest critics have not pretended to have found in my compositions triviality.
1862. Borrow, Wild Wales, lxxxix. III. 228. The loss of the house was a matter of triviality compared with that of the library.
1874. L. Stephen, Hours in Library (1892), II. ii. 39. The genuine excellence which underlay the superficial triviality of Crabbe’s verses.
2. With a, or (commonly) in pl.: Something trivial; a trivial matter, affair, characteristic, remark, etc.; a trifle.
1611. Cotgr., Trivialitez, Triuialities; triuiall, sleight, common, homelie, ordinarie matters.
c. 1664. Barrow, in Rigaud, Corr. Sci. Men (1841), II. 37. I … find little but repetitions and trivialities.
1824. U. S. Gaz., 6 April, 2/6. Matters of importance were so mingled up with trivialities that sufficient attention was not paid to them.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., I. xi. (1858), 45. A … Letter, full of compliments,… dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities. Ibid. (1843), Past & Pr., I. vi. The Practical labour of England is not a chimerical Triviality.
1877. Black, Green Past., v. Archery meetings and croquet parties and such trivialities.
