Trivia (pronounced triv-ee-uh)
(1) Matters or things that are very unimportant,
inconsequential, or nonessential; trifles; petty details, trifles, trivialities
(functions as both singular & plural).
(2) In the religion of Ancient Rome, (used as the epithet
Trivia) a name for the deity Diana: so called because she was trivius dea (goddess of three ways) and
also because she was regarded as a deity with three personae (Selene/Diana/Proserpine). In Greek mythology, the role (though not the epithet,
which is from the Latin) is associated with Artemis (the Greek equivalent of
Diana) and also with Hecate.
(3) A quiz game involving knowledge of (sometimes obscure)
facts, the best known of which is the commercially available Trivial Pursuit (and its forks).
1700–1710: From the Latin trivia, feminine plural of trivius, from trivium (place where three roads meet; junction of three roads),
the construct being tri-(three) + -vium, from via (way, road). Tri- was from
the Ancient Greek τρεῖς (treîs), from the Proto-Hellenic tréyes,
from the primitive Indo-European tréyes. The Latin adjective triviālis was from trivium
and thus came to mean “appropriate to the street corner, commonplace, vulgar”. In English trivial seems first to have
appeared (in the same sense as triviālis)
in 1589 and within decades was in common use in the modern sense: “Matters of
little importance or significance” and thus far removed from the original Medieval
scholastic triumvirate of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The adjective trivial meant “ordinary" in
the 1580s but by the turn of the century the sense had shifted to “insignificant,
trifling” and was from the Latin trivialis
(common, commonplace, vulgar (and literally “of or belonging to the crossroads”)). The verb trivialize dates from 1836 while the
noun triviality was known as early as the 1590s in the sense of “quality of
being trivial” and was at least influenced by the French trivialite or else from trivial, the phrases “a trivial thing”
& “a trivial affair” emerged during the 1610s. There is also the idea that because the trivium was an introductory-level
course, it became associated with things at their most basic and simple but
this notion came later and is thought by etymologists to be a grasp at linguistic
straws. Trivia is a noun (and proper
noun), trivial is a noun & adjective, triviality is a noun and trivialize,
trivialized; trivializing are verbs; the noun plural is trivias.
Trivial was picked up by Middle English (in the usual
haphazard way) but was used in senses different from the familiar modern
meaning. In the mid-fifteenth century
there was the phrase arte triviall an
allusion to the three liberal arts that comprised the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic), the lower division of the
seven (the advanced four (or quadrivium) being arithmetic, geometry, astronomy
& music.) taught in medieval universities, the link between pedagogy and
the Latin trivium (place where three
roads meet; junction of three roads) presumably the tradition of use in
Antiquity that the point at which the roads met was “a place of public resort”. Some etymologists also connect the very publicness
of such places with the pejorative association attached to “trivia”.
As a packaged commodity, trivia had long existed but it
began to labeled as such early in the twentieth century, the US-born British
essayist (and a genuine authority on the language) Logan Pearsall Smith
(1865–1946) in 1902 publishing Trivia
which was initially a commercial failure, his own mother’s critique of the text
that it “began nowhere, ended nowhere and
led to nothing” but for whatever reason it became so popular immediately
after the World War I (1914-1918) that in 1921 he released More Trivia, the two combined in a best-selling edition (with
annotations) in 1933. Whether so named
or not, books and later television series devoted to trivia (some quite
specialized) became an established niche in these industries and the most celebrated
product of all, the game Trivial Pursuit,
was released in 1981 and it begat literally dozens of thematically-specific editions
such as the “Horror Movie Edition” and “X”, a version described as “edgy” and “For
Adults” which Amazon recommends for, inter alia, “family games nights & kids
parties”.
Trivia by its nature attracted comic coinings. Administrivia
(the construct being adminis(trative) + trivia) was created in 1922 by a US academic lawyer to
refer to the administrative load (of mostly minor, procedural matters) carried by
a head of department or dean in a law school.
A triviaphile (the construct being trivia + -phile) is a person excessively fond of trivia, often boring others by reciting (obscure or
unimportant facts) and the word for practical purposes may be synonymous with triviaholic (trivia + -holic on the model of alcoholic) and both can also refer
to those obsessed with the game Trivial Pursuit. Although of concern only to
a learned few (including one supposes, triviaphiles
& triviaholics) there is a
technical point about the use of administrivia. In formal use, trivia, as a derivative of a
Latin plural, required a plural verb but modern authorities ten now to be more
permissive, extending the same tolerance enjoyed by Latin plurals such as data;
the “game” sense has always been thought of as a singular noun.
Long a staple of tabloid newspapers and trashy magazines, trivia pages are among the oldest clickbait on the internet and uselessdaily.com, cleveland.com, tvtropes.org, triviaplaying.com, diply.com, absurdtrivia.com and funtrivia.com all have Lindsay Lohan trivia pages, some interactive and some mere lists.
No comments:
Post a Comment