TRIVIALITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does triviality mean? 

• TRIVIALITY (noun)
  The noun TRIVIALITY has 3 senses:

1. the quality of being unimportant and petty or frivolous

2. a detail that is considered insignificant

3. something of small importance

  Familiarity information: TRIVIALITY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TRIVIALITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being unimportant and petty or frivolous

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

pettiness; puniness; slightness; triviality

Hypernyms ("triviality" is a kind of...):

unimportance (the quality of not being important or worthy of note)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "triviality"):

joke (a triviality not to be taken seriously)

Derivation:

trivial ((informal) small and of little importance)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A detail that is considered insignificant

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

trifle; triviality

Hypernyms ("triviality" is a kind of...):

detail; item; point (an isolated fact that is considered separately from the whole)

Derivation:

trivial (of little substance or significance)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Something of small importance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

small beer; trifle; trivia; triviality

Hypernyms ("triviality" is a kind of...):

object; physical object (a tangible and visible entity; an entity that can cast a shadow)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "triviality"):

bagatelle; fluff; frippery; frivolity (something of little value or significance)

 Context examples 

Helen Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me as she again went by.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In the presence of this old friend and of the tragedy which girt him round, the veil of triviality and affectation had been rent, and I felt all my gratitude towards him deepening for the first time into affection whilst I watched his pale, anxious face, and the eager hope which shone in his eyes as he awaited his friend’s explanation.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

When we went in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an English mind.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts—when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break—at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent—I am ever tender and true.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)