What is the origin of the word 'trivia'?

Roxanne33

The word trivia is actually a back formation from trivial, a word which English borrowed from Latin in the early 15th century, but which didn't take on its current meaning until the late 16th century. English took it from trivialis the possessive form of the Latin trivium 'crossroad' (literally 'three roads'). It has often been suggested that, the meeting place of three roads being equivalent to today's street corner, common folk would pass by having common (hence trivial) conversations. The sense of 'commonplace' evolved into 'trifling' or 'unimportant', and that is where today's sense of the word comes from. The noun trivia arose at the end of the 19th century. Source: http://www.takeourword.com/Issue101.html May 16 02, 1:50 PM

_princess_007

"Trivia" derives from "trivium," a Latin word meaning "three roads" or, colloquially, "crossroads." The derivative "trivialis" carried the sense of "common, ordinary, of the crossroads," the sort of thing found anywhere, which influenced the modern meaning of "trivial" as "of no importance." But "trivium" played an important role in Medieval education that led more directly to our modern sense of "trivia." The "trivium" (the "three ways" or "three roads") was the first stage of a classical education at the university level, composed of rhetoric, grammar and logic. This was followed by the more advanced postgraduate "quadrivium" ("four ways") of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Since the "trivium" was considered "the basics," the derivative "trivia" eventually came to mean "less important matters." http://www.word-detective.com/052206B.html#trivia Dec 01 06, 4:27 AM