trivial

First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, from Latin triviālis “belonging to the crossroads or street corner,” hence “commonplace,” equivalent to tri- “three” + vi(a) “road” + -ālis adjective suffix; see tri-, -al¹

1. See petty.

“My puns are not trivial. They are quadrivial” is one of James Joyce’s innumerable puns. He was playing the usual, common, “trivial” sense of trivial, “insignificant,” against its original English sense “pertaining to the trivium,” trivium being the first three of the seven liberal arts in the medieval university curriculum: (Latin) grammar, (Latin) rhetoric, and logic, so called because these subjects formed the “triple road to eloquence” ( triplex via ad eloquentiam ). This Medieval Latin sense of trivium dates from the Carolingian Renaissance of the late 8th century at the court of Charlemagne.
The Latin adjective triviālis, “pertaining to a crossroads or to public streets; common, vulgar, ordinary,” is a derivative of the classical Latin noun trivium meaning “the place where three roads meet, crossroads, intersection,” also “the street corner, the gutter (where bad character and manners are formed, and boys and young men ruined),” and finally the place sacred to the goddess Hecate. In Greek mythology, Hecate, who is associated with the moon and the netherworld, presides over (three-way) crossroads, doorways, magic, witchcraft, necromancy, and sorcery, and is mentioned as such by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, and Macbeth. The equivalent of Hecate in Roman mythology is Diana (especially one of Diana’s multiple personae). Regarded as a three-part deity, Diana has been known by various names, including Diana Trivia and simply Trivia.
Trivia is a word in Latin, the (neuter) plural of trivium “crossroads, intersection,” and the feminine singular of the adjective trivius “pertaining to a trivium ” (especially used as an epithet of the goddess Diana). The modern English trivia is New Latin, being the neuter plural of trivius, but its meaning “unimportant things, trifles, trivialities” is influenced by triviality and dates only from the beginning of the 20th century.

C15: from Latin triviālis belonging to the public streets, common, from trivium crossroads, junction of three roads, from tri- + via road