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trivial
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  • Violet had a real knack for inventing and building strange devices, so her brain was often filled with images of pulleys, levers, and gears, and she never wanted to be distracted by something as trivial as her hair.†   (source)
  • Except every once in a long while, when Laila was a grown woman, ironing a shirt or pushing her children on a swing set, something trivial, maybe the warmth of a carpet beneath her feet on a hot day or the curve of a stranger's forehead, would set off a memory of that afternoon together.†   (source)
  • They seemed embarrassingly trivial next to his.†   (source)
  • Except that the thought of Daddy doing any of these sociable, trivial, or, you might say, pleasant things was absurd.†   (source)
  • I don't remember all the trivial intricacies of Lydia's wheelchair rules—just that the four of us were finishing our dinner, and Lydia's presence at the dinner table was as new and noticeable as fresh paint.†   (source)
  • After several hours the commandant's assistant calls him in and sets down his ballpoint and looks across his desk as though Werner is one among a vast series of trivial problems he must put right.†   (source)
  • Her entries consisted of artistic manifestos, trivial complaints, character sketches and simple accounts of her day which increasingly shaded off into fantasy.†   (source)
  • Setting up the equalizer hose was trivial (for once I'm using equipment the way it was designed to be used).†   (source)
  • He asked me to decide on the most trivial matters, as if he were baiting me.†   (source)
  • She says you get used to it, to the amount of money they spend on such trivial things.†   (source)
  • It all seemed so trivial, so embarrassing.†   (source)
  • She would rather not torment herself, would rather turn her mind toward more trivial matters like the preparation of a good lip balm.†   (source)
  • And I happened to get a guy who taught it in a very dry, very trivial way.†   (source)
  • Apart from food and sleep, they found time for play, aimless and trivial, in the white sand by the bright water.†   (source)
  • But radium destroys any cells it encounters, and patients who'd taken it for trivial problems began dying.†   (source)
  • The argument was based on something so trivial it didn't seem worth wasting a single word on it.†   (source)
  • The game was trivial compared to the whole world.†   (source)
  • What trivial thing was I doing while they divided the map beneath my feet?†   (source)
  • I wracked my brain for something trivial.†   (source)
  • The feelings of those assigned to prevent Taylor from hurting quarterbacks were trivial compared to those of the quarterbacks he wanted to hurt.†   (source)
  • He was smart and the best Trivial Pursuit player I ever saw.†   (source)
  • It was a Friday night, during my parents' and Boo and Stewart's weekly Trivial Pursuit war.†   (source)
  • It will be very largely distributed throughout foreign countries, and is one of those trivial things by which these people will judge the artistic standard of the Fair.†   (source)
  • Once you've played around with these elements for a while, a kind of Trivial Pursuit of source material, go for the big one: what about Sarkin Aung Wan?†   (source)
  • Now here he was, waving aside my sympathy as though that had been an incident too trivial to recall.†   (source)
  • Yes, occasionally I might have ordered demigods to run trivial errands for me, like starting wars or retrieving magic items from monsters' lairs, but those requests didn't count.†   (source)
  • Prompt delivery of the pizza will be a trivial matter.†   (source)
  • He sounded angry, as if it were beneath his dignity to carry out such a trivial task.†   (source)
  • I should say that these errors have all been without exception quite trivial in themselves.†   (source)
  • But one of those trivial games almost ended the first thirty years of their life together, because one day there was no soap in the bathroom.†   (source)
  • It was a confidence-building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else's.†   (source)
  • By nature Art Moran was an uneasy person, nervous in the face of even trivial encounters.†   (source)
  • The theater of the absurd often portrays situations that are absolutely trivial.†   (source)
  • This forgrounding of "trivial" information and backgrounding of shocking knowledge secures the point of view but gives the reader pause about whether the voice of children can be trusted at all or is more trustworthy than an adult's.†   (source)
  • I felt ridiculous, pretending to be absorbed by something so trivial; but no one who saw us would have known that we weren't talking about the deepest secrets of our souls.†   (source)
  • "I have a well of trivial information," Estelle said with a tap of her finger to her temple.†   (source)
  • They'd found it in the basement closet, along with Chutes and Ladders and Trivial Pursuit.†   (source)
  • My comrades believed this was a trivial matter and the negative consequences of resistance would outweigh any benefits.†   (source)
  • I'm afraid it will sound stupid and petty and trivial.'†   (source)
  • Suddenly her aspirations seemed so trivial.†   (source)
  • The Threarah's rather good at making himself unpleasant when he's been woken up at ni-Frith for what he considers a piece of trivial nonsense.†   (source)
  • "And this might also sound trivial, but I don't think you'd make attractive children."†   (source)
  • He was getting to know well the odd jail-bleach the cotton mill puts on country cheeks, the curious, dulled, yet resentful expression of the eyes, begotten by continuous repetition of excessive hours of trivial, monotonous toil.†   (source)
  • Some days, I am thankful for the most trivial things, and other days I feel a deep sense of gratitude for my life and everything surrounding me.†   (source)
  • I had none of these concerns, because I was so much luckier than the majority of the women I'd been living with in Danbury, but I felt disrespected by how trivial these classes were turning out to be.†   (source)
  • It was hot and the blowflies were already buzzing over the horse blood, but those were trivial discomforts.†   (source)
  • The island is a trivial scab barely cresting the infinite Pacific, its eight square miles only about a third the mass of Manhattan Island.†   (source)
  • Anyway, it was just one more little, trivial thing.†   (source)
  • "Problem is, you don't have many" I fixed on his eyes, hoping they would relax and that we'd move on to something trivial like, You better start cutting down those long hours, Lindsay.†   (source)
  • And I provided for them all they might need or want, finding even the most trivial request worth my immediate attention.†   (source)
  • A brash assistant brought the chaplain a stolen Zippo cigarette lighter as a gift and informed him condescendingly that Wintergreen was too deeply involved with wartime activities to concern himself with matters so trivial as the number of missions men had to fly.†   (source)
  • It's a takeoff on the board game Trivial Pursuit.†   (source)
  • At the sideshow, a scruffy carnival barker was shouting through a megaphone, promising glimpses of "the most shocking errors of nature allowed on view by law" for a trivial fee.†   (source)
  • These trivial remarks were the point of the broadcast.†   (source)
  • She discovered that memorization ("by-hearting," as Matron called it) was of no help to her at the bedside, where she struggled to distinguish the trivial from the life threatening.†   (source)
  • She hated thinking of Jace and Valentine as being in any way alike, even in so trivial a thing as a glance.†   (source)
  • Seems kind of trivial.†   (source)
  • Jake filed a trivial objection on the grounds that Buckley did not have the necessary experience.†   (source)
  • Like I said, we were too stupid to realize that, as our lives spun round and round on these trivial things, my momma's life was running through her hands like water.†   (source)
  • And so obvious, it's trivial.†   (source)
  • Perhaps this (apparently) trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America.†   (source)
  • At the Hall, I had learned to keep my mind on my duties and let the talk, which was mostly trivial, wash over me like the twittering of birds in a distant thicket.†   (source)
  • She told Annie her life in "The Colonies" had given her vulgar, slovenly ways which she set about curing by sending her to bed with no supper and smacking her legs, for the most trivial of crimes, with a long-handled wooden spoon.†   (source)
  • The Eyrie was such a lonely place that she was eager for any bit of news from the world beyond, however trivial or insignificant.†   (source)
  • Now and then some trivial argument would break out, and one of them would kill another one, and all the others would detach themselves from the killer as neatly as blood clotting, and they'd consider the case and they'd either excuse him, for some reason, or else send him out to the forest to live by stealing from their outlying pens like a wounded fox.†   (source)
  • He spent the morning hanging around the house and yard, exploding with bad temper now and then over trivial matters, so that everyone crept about on tiptoe and worked very hard indeed, in order not to attract his attention.†   (source)
  • Spare no detail, no matter how trivial you think it may be.†   (source)
  • But since my parents raised me to pray about anything that's on my heart, I pray—even if some of those things are trivial in the overall scheme of things.†   (source)
  • …in the violent chaos of the next few days-the issues had never been named, the sides had remained unacknowledged, but everyone had known that the bloody encounters between the older workers and the newer had not been driven to such ferocious intensity by the trivial causes that kept setting them off-neither guards nor policemen nor state troopers had been able to keep order for the length of a day-nor could any faction muster a candidate willing to accept the post of "People's Manager.†   (source)
  • For him it was all trivial prose.†   (source)
  • Undoubtedly, it's trivial.†   (source)
  • If they think about it and look at all its consequences, they will give up trivial objections to a Constitution because if the Constitution is rejected, the Union will probably end.†   (source)
  • Several of the other spokesmen had complained about the change, but though the fishing towns could often exert some influence on the principle city in matters of public concern, they had little recourse in an issue as trivial to the general populace as this.†   (source)
  • Perhaps distinction seems trivial since I was Mike's valet from day he was unpacked.†   (source)
  • She raged about people of great skill and empathy wasting their time on sideshows, on minor issues, trivial matters.†   (source)
  • Only Gabriel and Dina refused to distract themselves with trivial pursuits.†   (source)
  • It's down-to-earth, it's simple, it's untrue, and it's familiar enough and trivial enough to be understood and loved by our greedy, nervous, illiterate sponsors.'†   (source)
  • In one fuzzed motion he flung himself down and away, rolling, covering his skull, mouth open, yelping a trivial little yelp.†   (source)
  • Sprightly, trivial, and harmless items she passed on to friends, thus enhancing her status and relieving the tedium of spinsterhood.†   (source)
  • Oh yes, quite often-but only on trivial points.†   (source)
  • And this was not a trivial question.†   (source)
  • These she administered with my belt, often for what seemed to me like trivial offenses such as coming home late for supper because I was having a good time sledding on the hill.†   (source)
  • In fact, I was coming to the painful conclusion that all my victories would seem minuscule and trivial compared to my expectations at the beginning of the year.†   (source)
  • From these trivial signs Yurii Andreievich gathered that Antipova was known and liked in the town.†   (source)
  • There were few good friends among the grown people, and they were not poor enough for the other sort of intimate acquaintance, but everyone nodded and spoke, and even might talk short times, trivially, and at the two extremes of the general or the particular, and ordinarily nextdoor neighbors talked quite a bit when they happened to run into each other, and never paid calls.†   (source)
  • To him, justice was at stake, and all other concerns were trivial.†   (source)
  • Even now it does not seem trivial.†   (source)
  • This is trivial, Master Cromwell.†   (source)
  • The careless question repeated inside my head, anything but trivial.†   (source)
  • Okay, these were mostly trivial things, but I got more and more irritated with her.†   (source)
  • In the early days, when the Metaverse was a featureless black bali, this was a trivial job.†   (source)
  • Axelson was our resident academic as well as our Trivial Pursuit king.†   (source)
  • Obviously Trivial Pursuit was not his only strength.†   (source)
  • But that seems too trivial now, though I shouldn't say that.†   (source)
  • I smiled to myself as I thought of that most trivial of reasons for changing.†   (source)
  • This is not a trivial matter, and I won't just go away.†   (source)
  • And I suppose that's when I get angry over some trivial little thing and leave.†   (source)
  • It blends in with all the others; it was some trivial occasion.†   (source)
  • I thought of my postcards from Europe, arriving at Avilion with their cheerful, trivial messages.†   (source)
  • Digging, bending over, and bagging samples were trivial tasks.†   (source)
  • Trivial hurts, tiny human accidents,' said Firenze, as his hooves thudded over the mossy floor.†   (source)
  • This may seem trivial, but there's one incident I've never forgiven her for.†   (source)
  • She made a point of writing as if everything were normal, sharing the trivial news of home.†   (source)
  • Quite trivial in themselves - at least so far.†   (source)
  • When you have done time in a mental hospital, that is never a trivial question.†   (source)
  • In the past this would have been a trivial enough remark, a kind of scholarly speculation.†   (source)
  • As if it was trivial for us, a frill, a whim.†   (source)
  • Reyna waved her hand as if the question was trivial.†   (source)
  • Sula, like always, was incapable of making any but the most trivial decisions.†   (source)
  • You're a fount of trivial information, Mr. Brown.†   (source)
  • "But," he added, pausing by Alec's chair and leaning in close to him, "you are not trivial."†   (source)
  • Who would have thought it would end so… so trivially?†   (source)
  • On the other hand, the effects of priming aren't trivial.†   (source)
  • Ursula was unable to string together even a trivial conversation with him.†   (source)
  • I'm sleeping on a hill right now-I can't just go on some crazy search for something this trivial.†   (source)
  • Afterward, their conversation had been trivial, polite almost.†   (source)
  • I enjoy pestering the girls in this minor, trivial way: it shows I am not like them.†   (source)
  • I had my equivalents, trivial as they were, for all these perils.†   (source)
  • He nodded, seeming slightly cheered by my obvious pleasure in this trivial fact.†   (source)
  • Both seemed trivial to Yousef, because all problems, at his age, seem solvable or not worth solving.†   (source)
  • Max thought he looked like a little boy who had been caught cheating at something trivial.†   (source)
  • Your offense was not 'trivial,' I simply made allowance for ignorance.†   (source)
  • The fact that there are now women playing for symphony orchestras is not a trivial change.†   (source)
  • There was so much she wanted to say but not a word of it trivial enough for the occasion.†   (source)
  • I listened too eagerly to even the most trivial news.†   (source)
  • After the day's labor, feeding and playing with Nick had proven to be no trivial task.†   (source)
  • 6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right.†   (source)
  • Details would be trivial and pointless; besides, I had no time to take notes.†   (source)
  • There's something that's so different about the South even in trivial ways.†   (source)
  • In the face of this, George's own problems seemed suddenly trivial.†   (source)
  • I suppose you find it incredible that such trivial things could matter so much in our married life.†   (source)
  • They faced shortages of the most trivial but necessary items.†   (source)
  • The replies were so trivial, so ambiguous.†   (source)
  • Don't omit any derail, however trivial it seems.†   (source)
  • He makes his way stealthily down the front stairs, but not stealthily enough: his landlady has taken to waylaying him on some trivial matter or another, and she glides out from the parlour now, in her faded black silk and lace collar, clutching her customary handkerchief in one thin hand, as if tears are never far off.†   (source)
  • At the same time I saw this longing of mine as trivial and absurd, because I'd taken such magazines lightly enough once.†   (source)
  • Not out of malice, but because people in Mr. Wandati's position often cannot appreciate how small, trivial things like this could bring shame to a man like me.†   (source)
  • I ran across the street toward the Okada house, where dry goods were sold; but then something happened to me—one of those trivial things with huge consequences, like losing your step and falling in front of a train.†   (source)
  • Plane crashes are much more likely to be the result of an accumulation of minor difficulties and seemingly trivial malfunctions.†   (source)
  • The incident, of course, gave them the opportunity to evoke many other trivial quarrels from many other dim and turbulent dawns.†   (source)
  • She was also beginning to think that the conversations at the other tables might not be as trivial as she had supposed them to be.†   (source)
  • That spring—in the same month—Martin Luther King had been assassinated and Hair had opened on Broadway; the summer of '68 suffered from what would become the society's commonplace blend of the murderous and the trivial.†   (source)
  • For Steve Farese, a single bullet fired into one's husband's back counted as a trivial offense: a human being could hardly think up a thing to do that Farese couldn't construe as innocent.†   (source)
  • One evening, I got into an argument with a friend about something trivial, and before I knew what was happening I had pressed myself into the wall and was hugging my knees to my chest, trying to keep my heart from leaping out of my body.†   (source)
  • What happens if the writer is good is usually not that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the work actually acquires depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts, weight from the accumulated use of certain basic patterns and tendencies.†   (source)
  • During the ride back north, I thought about the colonel's letter, or rather, about my own pleasure in these trivial alterations.†   (source)
  • Here was Daddy, balked, not by a machine (he had talent and patience for machines), but by one of us, or by some trivial circumstance.†   (source)
  • He had been the most stoic man I had ever known, but since the stroke the most trivial things made him agitated, anxious, tearful.†   (source)
  • " What made the incident particularly frightening was Holmes's manner as he made the offer—"about the same manner one would expect from a friend who was asking you the most trivial question," Bowman said.†   (source)
  • But at this phase, the all-male society of bit-heads that made up the power structure of Black Sun Systems said that the face problem was trivial and superficial.†   (source)
  • I sat there peering at Sabrina from under the brim of my floppy sun hat and eavesdropping on their trivial chatter, which they threw up in front of themselves like camouflage.†   (source)
  • Since the reading from Luke concluded by observing that "Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart"—and surely the "things" that Mary so kept and pondered were far more matterful than these trivial gifts— shouldn't she do something to demonstrate to the audience what a strain on her poor heart it was to do such monumental keeping and pondering?†   (source)
  • No courses; looks up many things in Knaur's Encyclopedia and Lexicon; likes to read detective stories, medical books and love stories, exciting or trivial.†   (source)
  • For some reason best known to our resident king of Trivial Pursuit, he led us off the high mountain ridge and down toward the valley which spread out from the elbow of the dogleg.†   (source)
  • Perhaps because of the daily confinement and the close proximity to each other, we argued often in those days, Suleiman and I. We argued the way married couples do, stubbornly, heatedly, and over trivial things.†   (source)
  • But he gave Narcissa information of the sort that is very valuable to Voldemort, yet must have seemed much too trivial for Sirius to think of banning him from repeating it.†   (source)
  • It's not a trivial exercise.†   (source)
  • I'm sure many a young girl has spoiled her prospects in life by refusing to do something expected of her, or by behaving badly toward an important man, or some such thing; but the mistake I made was so trivial I wasn't even aware I'd done anything.†   (source)
  • Her father's every word, his casual glances, his most trivial gestures, seemed set with traps to uncover her secret.†   (source)
  • Astonishingly prone to exaggerating the severity of the most trivial illness or injury, they were forever racing off to doctors and hospitals, as if they were about to die.†   (source)
  • Trivial?†   (source)
  • It had been going on for at least five years, ever since Boo had given my father a Trivial Pursuit game for a birthday present.†   (source)
  • Most of the discussions were trivial—Louie would be remembered for descriptions of his mother's cooking—but the content didn't matter.†   (source)
  • Even now, when Mother forgets any detail, however trivial, that look comes into his eyes—the one he had in the moments after the collision, when blood poured from his own mouth as he took in the scene, raking his eyes over what he imagined to be the work of his hands and his hands only.†   (source)
  • The closest thing to it was the flicker of irritation that people thought they saw in him when he was, almost invariably, treated as a trivial footnote in what was celebrated as Louie's story.†   (source)
  • These errors may be trivial in themselves, Mr Stevens, but you must yourself realize their larger significance.†   (source)
  • My parents, Boo, and Stewart were in their customary Friday night places, sitting around the dining room table, with the Trivial Pursuit board spread out in the middle.†   (source)
  • Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the bridge.†   (source)
  • His replacement was a fellow named Mike Moroski, so obscure that any question concerning his NFL career would be considered out of bounds in a game of Trivial Pursuit.†   (source)
  • Life would have been quite another matter for them both if they had learned in time that it was easier to avoid great matrimonial catastrophes than trivial everyday miseries.†   (source)
  • But I must say I am at some loss as to why you should be so concerned with these most trivial of errors.†   (source)
  • With sorrowing heart she reprimanded him in what appeared to be a casual question in the midst of other trivial remarks: "Why do you insist on talking about what does not exist?"†   (source)
  • It came so easily to him, said Boggess, that if his talent for throwing the discus did not wind up seeming so trivial when set beside his other talents, "they'd have taken him away and trained him up and he'd have been big time."†   (source)
  • It is true one or two errors have been noticeable recently in the discharging of his duties, but these are in every case very trivial in nature.†   (source)
  • This is what these 'trivial errors' as you call them really signify and if you do not heed them, it will not be long before your father commits an error of major proportions.†   (source)
  • I am not sure she could actually have gone so far as to say things like: 'these errors may be trivial in themselves, but you must yourself realize their larger significance'.†   (source)
  • And it was then, I believe, that his lordship said as he looked down again into his volume and awkwardly fingered an entry: "These errors may be trivial in themselves, Stevens, but you must yourself realize their larger significance.†   (source)
  • I am sorry to say this, but there would appear to have been a number of houses in recent times, some of the highest pedigree, which have tended to take a competitive attitude towards each other and have not been above showing off to guests a butler's mastery of such trivial accomplishments.†   (source)
  • It is true, these same trivial errors did cause me some anxiety at first, but once I had had time to diagnose them correctly as symptoms of nothing more than a straightforward staff shortage, I have refrained from giving them much thought.†   (source)
  • It struck me as a trivial, but irritating error; the dust-pan would have been conspicuous not only from the five ground-floor doorways opening on to the hall, but also from the staircase and the first-floor balconies.†   (source)
  • But I soon reminded myself that such trivial slips are liable to befall anyone from time to time and my irritation soon turned to Miss Kenton for attempting to create such unwarranted fuss over the incident.†   (source)
  • Richter, "but if Astaroth gains possession of this book, our present worries will seem trivial indeed."†   (source)
  • There were predictable influences on what made them look back at the screen, and these were not trivial things, not just flash and dash.†   (source)
  • Other people thought it was about female slavery, others that it was a stereotyping of women in negative and trivial domestic roles.†   (source)
  • Yet I was sitting here, listening to the same songs as before, staring at my poster of Anubis and feeling helplessly conflicted about something as trivial and infuriating as … yes, you guessed it.†   (source)
  • The realization that Qurong might put off the wed-ding over such a trivial matter sent a shaft of anger through Woref s heart.†   (source)
  • So I am starting to think that the real cause of my restlessness is something that I saw this afternoon, which was most ordinary and trivial.†   (source)
  • It was hard to talk about love with Charlie—we were so much alike, always reverting to trivial things to avoid embarrassing emotional displays.†   (source)
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