trivium

noun

Etymology: PIE word *tréyes Borrowed from Latin trivium.

1. The lower division of the liberal arts in a medieval university; grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

   “Surely some demon must possess the lad, / Who showed more wit than ever school-boy had, / And learned his Trivium thus without the rod; / But Alcuin said it was the grace of God.”

   “As to the nature of his studies, there can be no doubt that he [Dante] went through the trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) of the then ordinary university course.”

2. The three anterior ambulacra of echinoderms, collectively.
3. Singular of trivia; anything of little importance.

   “[…] question of sympathy or antipathy sometimes evoked by a trivium; and in the category of trivia many learned and responsible individuals include Motion Pictures. Only they are not so trivial if we consider the power of feeling evoked by Motion Pictures, and the number of movie-goers.”

   “For the most part, Mrs. Fenner lays stress on the personalities and accomplishments of the executive secretaries, which is as it should be, since these gentlemen remained longer in the center of things than the presidents, who were elected for one year. The style is unpedantic and is flavored with references to colorful trivia, as for example, to the drunken janitor (p. 37) and to the romantic outcomes of NEA conventions (p. 28). Perhaps matrimony is not a trivium.”