Floccinaucinihilipilification. No I
didn't just slam my forehead on the keyboard, it's a real word. It's
the categorising of something that is useless or trivial. I think I
do that a bit. I'll have to make a note of being a
floccinaucinihilipilificationist. Despite it's meaning, the
pronunciation of floccinaucinihilipilification is no trivial task.
As far as I'm concerned, trivialis is
the original, more correct descriptive term, not the term trivial.
Like most words, trivia originally derived from the Latin, tri meaning
triple and via meaning way, "a place where three ways meet".
The word trivia was used to describe a
place where three roads met in Ancient Rome. All of which roads were
said to lead to Rome, but that probably had something to do with them
being built by Romans, and Rome is where the Romans wanted to go when
they finished roaming around. Later the term trivialis became a
derogatory term meaning "appropriate to the street corner".
Eventually trivia began referring to
the lower division of the Artes Liberales (liberal arts), basic
education, being: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. The higher division
of the Liberal Arts was the quadrivia, higher education. The
quadrivia (four ways) being: arithmetic, geometry, music, and
astronomy. So things not of the higher education (the quadvia) became
referred to as trivial.
I think they had the right idea in the middle ages with the development of the codpiece. People are going to stair, so you might as well may a good show of it all. The codpiece began as a simple piece of fabric to cover the gap in a gentleman leggings. As time wore on it became more elaborately decorated and padded. Which is a good way to turn something unsightly to something more pleasing.
