We explain what is trivial, the origin of the word and its synonyms. Also, how its meaning has changed throughout history.
The trivial can be something everyday or something superficial, unimportant.What is trivial?
For him adjective trivial one understands something that, as ordinary and known to all, lacks novelty or importance. Are synonyms from this word the terms banal, vulgar or common: a "trivial conversation" is one in which nothing deep or important is discussed; while a “trivial situation” can refer to everyday life, to what happens without being exceptional in any way.
The origin of the word trivial dates back to Latin trivialis, derived from trivium, a term translatable as “three-way crossing”. The historical explanation of this dictates that ancient Rome could be reached from different corners of the Roman empire through three main roads, eventually converging into one.
In that meeting place, there were inns, posts and places of rest for the traveler, where people of diverse origins and different interests met, among whom only superficial conversations could take place, that is, conversations of the trivium, conversations trivial.
Since the typical of the encounters that took place between travelers, prostitutes and soldiers in these inns on the way in the Antiquity, was that they were handled in colloquial, vulgar and popular terms, the trivial for us still has connotations related to the uneducated, the vulgar or the little refined. In fact, in Italian it is still called trivia to foul or foul language.
However, the term trivium was used during the Middle Ages european in the context of university education, which consisted of teaching the so-called seven "liberal arts" or higher: grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music Y astronomy.
Among them, those related to the domain of word and the argumentation they constituted the trivium, while those linked to math they made up the quadrivium. In order to address the latter, the first three had to be mastered first, further reinforcing the concept that the trivial is basic, simple, less elaborate.