Trifling means too small or unimportant to bother about. A trifling sum, trifling details, trifling and irrelevant.
It dismisses rather than describes — calling an objection trifling is a way of refusing to answer it — and it is formal and slightly old-fashioned. Note trifle, both the small thing and the dessert, which is named because it was thought of as a light nothing of a dish.
1adjectivetriflingToo small or unimportant to bother about.
“The fine was trifling compared with the huge profits the company had made.”
synonyms: negligible, petty
trifling is a quality of unimportance.
Also accepted in games: negligible
Proto-Indo-European
*tewh₂-
Old French
trufle — mockery
Middle English
trifle
English
trifle
English, today
trifling
Built from
by surface analysis, trifle + -ing. trifle comes from Middle English trifle, trifel, triful, trefle, truyfle, trufful, from Old French trufle (“mockery”), a byform of trufe, truffe (“deception”), of uncertain origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA