trivialize
Americanverb (used with object)
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trivializes,
present (3rd person singular)
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trivialized,
past participle, past
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trivializing
present participle
verb
Usage
What does trivialize mean? Trivialize means to cause something to appear unimportant or insignificant, as in Gabe tried to trivialize the D he got in math, but his parents still grounded him. Trivialize is a verb form of the adjective trivial. It’s often used by the person being trivialized, rather than by the person doing the trivializing. Example: Do not trivialize the effort that was put into my project.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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trivializesimple
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trivializessimple
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have trivializedperfect
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has trivializedperfect
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am trivializingprogressive
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are trivializingprogressive
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is trivializingprogressive
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have been trivializingperfect progressive
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has been trivializingperfect progressive
Past
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trivializedsimple
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had trivializedperfect
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was trivializingprogressive
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were trivializingprogressive
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had been trivializingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of trivialize
Explanation
When you trivialize something, you make it seem less important than it really is. Some people complain that TV news tends to trivialize complicated political stories. If your friend tends to trivialize your problems and worries, he dismisses them as being too small to fret about, which might make you feel like he's not taking you seriously. If you trivialize your own health concerns, other people might not realize how sick you're feeling. When you trivialize an issue, you make it look more trivial than it is, or less significant. The Latin root of both trivialize and trivial is trivialis, "common, commonplace, or vulgar."
Vocabulary lists containing trivialize
Martin Scorsese on Cinema
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The Big Thirst
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"How the Media Twists the News"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
We don’t want to hear commencement speeches about how we cannot outrun AI domination because they trivialize the work we have done ourselves.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026
I don’t think that is a huge movement — to trivialize — as much as to say, “Hey, we should actually fight it where it is, fight it where the problems are.”
From Salon ● Oct. 25, 2024
She’s worried that these trending videos may trivialize the profession and those searching for pain relief.
From New York Times ● Jun. 19, 2024
And while its intensity and dedication is easy to dismiss or trivialize, its rise has reshaped how we view — and, by extension, the power of — a TV genre that’s typically not taken seriously.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 18, 2023
Not to understand this is to misunderstand the public uses of schooling and to trivialize the nature of intimate life—a family’s ‘language.’
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
Kercher’s sister, Stephanie Kercher, told the BBC this week that Knox’s show trivializes the murder of her sister in Perugia, where the two women were students almost two decades ago.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
Meme-driven AI content that trivializes conflict as it spreads misinformation is increasingly crowding out reality on digital platforms, in what ISD researchers call the "Legofication" of war propaganda.
From Barron's ● Apr. 2, 2026
When media carry this real oppression and suffering as programming, it trivializes the social harm and human suffering.
From Salon ● Feb. 24, 2025
It trivializes the experiences of those who are medication non-responsive, unstable, underemployed, or simply overwhelmed.
From Slate ● Mar. 30, 2023
Although there may be some truth in both hypotheses, this sort of posthumous off-the-rack psychoanalysis is a dubious, highly speculative enterprise that inevitably demeans and trivializes the absent analysand.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
The issue has been trivialized to the point of being "presented as a form of therapy", argued Trudo Lemmens, a health law professor at the University of Toronto.
From Barron's ● Feb. 25, 2026
Cobb didn’t find much to read about menopause, beyond shoddy research and medical tracts which trivialized or pathologized what she knew to be a natural phase of life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 7, 2026
L.A. is frequently seen as a place of destruction, where the past is bulldozed and forgotten and then trivialized and romanticized.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2025
Popular culture traps us in the privatized universe of celebrity culture, urging us to define ourselves through the often empty and trivialized and highly individualized interests of celebrities.
From Salon ● Feb. 25, 2025
She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated I was living with my head in the sand.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
It’s not trivializing this summit or missing the point, I would argue, to understand it as first and foremost a semiotic spectacle, conducted through language, symbols and signifiers.
From Salon ● May 17, 2026
Some Chinese commentators have warned against trivializing the war for the sake of reaching new audiences.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2025
Hogan, “Hogan’s Heroes” ran from 1965-71 on CBS but was criticized for trivializing World War II and turning the Nazis into lovable cartoons.
From Seattle Times ● May 28, 2024
Barbara Walters, the woman blamed for trivializing TV news, commented: “I rest my case.”
From Washington Post ● Dec. 30, 2022
Here is the whole program of confusing, enervating, and trivializing the mind of the world.
From The International Jew The World's Foremost Problem by Henry Ford
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
