Word Finder - trifling

definition

The act of one who trifles; frivolous behaviour.

definition

Trivial, or of little importance.

definition

Idle or frivolous.

definition

Of suspicious character, typically secretive or deceitful; shady.

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.

But these figures are trifling compared with those at the end of the middle ages.

Although iron, copper, coal and lignite are worked, the mineral wealth is trifling.

Under his hand the most trifling subjects gained a new importance; yet he treated the gravest with a touch so light that he seemed to have invented the sciences rather than learnt them, for he was always a creator, always original, and himself was imitable of none."

Moissan, contains only a trifling amount of morphia, and the effect produced by it is apparently due, not to that alkaloid, but to such decomposition products as pyrrol, acetone and pyridine and hydropyridine bases.

Marey repeats Borelli and Diirckheim with very trifling modifications, so late as 1869.

The truth is that we possess but a trifling portion of a very much larger Avesta, if we are to believe native tradition, carrying us back to the Sassanian period, which tells of a larger Avesta in twenty-one books called nasks or nosks, as to the names of which we have several more or less detailed accounts, particularly in the Pahlavi Dinkard (9th century A.D.) and in the Rivayats.

Of these one or two, as we have evidence, tried their hands at engraving; among their engravings were these "knots," which, being things of use for decorative craftsmen to copy, were inscribed for identification, and perhaps for protection, as coming from the Achademia Leonardi Vinci; a trifling matter altogether, and quite unfit to sustain the elaborate structure of conjecture which has been built on it.

For these densities, the deviation of the water face from the vertical in the figure of least sectional area is, however, so trifling that, so far as this consideration is concerned, it may be neglected.

In one of these trifling affairs on the 27th of August 1782, on the Combahee river, Laurens exposed himself needlessly and was killed.

Pierre Battifol' is correct in supposing that the Disciplina arcani was more or less of a makebelieve, a bit of belletristic trifling on the part of the overrhetorical Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries.

Only so far as we can get away from the modern view that a person's name is a trifling accident, and breathe the atmosphere which broods over ancient religions, can we understand the use of the name in baptisms, exorcisms, prayers, purifications and consecrations.

A study of the few sentences under this head might have obviated the trifling criticism of Hamilton's objection which has been set afloat recently, that the denial of a knowledge of the absolute or infinite implies a foregone knowledge of it.

Some of the clauses are unimportant concessions to individuals, or deal with matters of trifling importancesuch as the celebrated weirs or kiddies on Thames and Medway, or the expulsion of the condottieri chiefs Gerard dAthies and Engeihart de Cigogn.

The earl, who could only raise a trifling force in the Marches, where the barons were all his enemies, failed in several attempts to force a passage eastward.

Marching with a trifling Battle of force to expel her from the north, he was surprised and Wakefield.

The jubilee showed conclusively that, whatever politicians might say, the ties of blood and kinship, which united the two peoples, were too close to be severed by either for some trifling cause; that the wisest heads in both nations were aware of the advantages which must arise from the closer union of the Anglo-Saxon races; and that the true interests of both countries lay in their mutual friendship. A war in which the United States was subsequently engaged with Spain cemented this feeling.

These animals are of great use and profit to their masters, for their wool is very good and fine, particularly that of the species called pacas, which have very long fleeces; and the expense of their food is trifling, as a handful of maize suffices them, and they can go four or five days without water.

In spite of the "enormities and filthinesses," which Giraldus says defiled the Irish Church, nothing worse could be found to condemn than marriages within the prohibited degrees and trifling irregularities about baptism.

The danger on land seemed trifling to Venice so long as she could keep the sea open to her trade and press the war against the Genoese in the Levant.

Whether the entrance pupil be before or behind the object, in general its position is such that it lies not too near the object, so that the principal rays will have in the object space only trifling inclinations towards one another or are strictly parallel.

Aratus was no astronomer, while Hipparchus was; and from the fact that the latter adopted, with but trifling exceptions, the constellation system portrayed by Aratus, it may be concluded that the system was already familiar in Greek thought.

Later in the year another convention, to which the proposed constitution had been referred, adopted instead the constitution of North Carolina with a few trifling changes, and William Cocke was chosen to present to Congress a memorial requesting recognition as a state.

In the United Kingdom the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 empowered the Board of Trade to require all passenger trains, within a reasonable period, to be fitted with automatic continuous brakes, and now all the passenger stock, with a few trifling exceptions, is provided with either compressed-air or vacuum brakes (see Brake), and sometimes with both.

In West Africa the Mpongwe believe in local spirits, just as do the Eskimo; but they are regarded as inoffensive in the main; true, the passerby must make some trifling offering as he nears their place of abode; but it is only occasionally that mischievous acts, such as the throwing down of a tree on a passer-by, are, in the view of the natives, perpetuated by the Ombuiri.

Subsequently, whether from the fact that such bold speculations were obnoxious to the general sense of propriety in Elea, or from the inferiority of its leaders, the school degenerated into verbal disputes as to the possibility of motion, and similar academic trifling.

The error due to the neglect of the former would at most amount to 1%, while a reduction to the mean level of the sea necessitates but a trifling reduction, amounting, in the case of a base-line 300,000 metres in length, measured on a plateau of 3700 metres (12,000 ft.) in height, to 57 metres only.

But commentators are not at one as to which countess of Salisbury was the heroine of the adventure, whether she was Katherine Montacute or Joan the Fair Maid of Kent, while Heylyn rejects the legend as " a vain and idle romance derogatory both to the founder and the order, first published by Polydor Vergil, a stranger to the affairs of England, and by him taken upon no better ground than fama vulgi, the tradition of the common people, too trifling a foundation for so great a building."

His earliest publication, a Carta de un residente en Roma (1725), is a panegyric of trifling interest, and La Juventud triunfante (1727) was written in collaboration with Luis de Lovada.

Against Lalande, owing to some trifling pique, he closed his doors "during an entire revolution of the moon's nodes."

For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them--who were above such trifling.

To the majority, this is a trifling matter, but obviously it constitutes a serious moral transgression for a Christian.

Then again, was it so trifling a skirmish to such mighty warriors as to have been forgotten already?

He did not want the trifling sum which every New York policeman acquires.

I have noted this trifling circumstance only to point out how bad temper blinds its victims.

Christians would be less caught up in activities that often seem trifling, trivial, parochial in the narrow sense of the word.

The lakes of Central Italy, which are comparatively of trifling dimensions, belong to a wholly different class.

At Naples a trifling disturbance in September 1849, led to the lion oi arrest of a large number of persons connected with the Liberals Unitd Italiana, a society somewhat similar to the in Naples.

The land in Scotland was now, with trifling exceptions, let on leases for terms varying from twenty to thirty years, and in farms of sufficient size to employ at the least two or three ploughs.

Timur did not cross into Europe, and contented himself with accepting some trifling presents from the Greek emperor.

His advice was successfully followed, and the "Argo" made the passage unscathed, except for trifling damage to the stern.

These, however, gave way before the threat of the advancing French and after a few trifling skirmishes.

Many of the wooden and iron vessels listed in the Naval Annual, 1906, though obsolete and of no value whatever as fighting machines, are used for river and harbour service, and in the suppression of trifling insurrections.

Except for some trifling notices of sounds heard in certain diseases, this method was entirely new.

The later poetry of the Augus tan age had ended in trifling dilettantism, for the continuance of which the atmosphere of the court was no longer favourable.

The Ionians were naturally averse from prolonged warfare, and in the prosperity which must have followed the final rout of the Persians and the freeing of the Aegean from the pirates (a very important feature in the league's policy) a money contribution was only a trifling burden.

He was then attacked by a complaint at first apparently trifling; but his strength daily and rapidly declined till the 1st of January 1748, when he died peacefully in his sleep.

He is free from the scholastic trifling and learned frivolity which tainted the rhetorical culture of his century.

The Mahommedan legends regarding him are curious, but trifling.

If the scale is only slightly out of the perpendicular, a few taps of the hammer will modify any trifling error."