trivia means an aspect of the Roman goddess Diana, pertaining to her role as guardian of trivia (crossroads or forks where three roads meet); used as an epithet. It carries an Arena rating of 1686, earned across 70 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, trivia ranks #151 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #276 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #305 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #400 of 42,785 for Qualifying.
trivia is pronounced /ˈtɹɪvi.ə/.
Why “trivia” is a great word
Insignificant trifles or obscure items of information considered to be of little importance. From Latin trivia, plural of trivium ('place where three roads meet'), from tri- ('three') + via ('road, way'); the derivative trivialis ('common, ordinary, commonplace') led to the modern sense of unimportant matters. Unlike 'erudition' (which denotes profound, scholarly knowledge) or 'essential' (which signifies the fundamental and indispensable), trivia is the scattered residue of curiosity—the middle name of a forgotten vice president, the precise weight of a hummingbird's egg, the half-remembered rule about monarch butterflies and milkweed. These are the dust motes dancing in the sunbeam of attention, weightless, endless, and quietly cherished precisely because they ask for nothing but to be known.
name
- An aspect of the Roman goddess Diana, pertaining to her role as guardian of trivia (crossroads or forks where three roads meet); used as an epithet.
noun
- Insignificant trifles of little importance, especially items of unimportant information.e.g.“These trivia take up too much of the day.”
- A quiz game that involves obscure facts.e.g.“I joined the trivia club this semester!”
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.