trifle
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈtɹaɪfəl/
rhymes: -aɪfəl
Forms: form: trifles
form: trifling
form: trifled
form: trifled
Etymology: From Middle English trifle, trifel, triful, trefle, truyfle, trufful, from Old French trufle (“mockery”), a byform of trufe, truffe (“deception”), of uncertain origin.
Senses: examples: text: You must not trifle with her affections.
text: […] Do not believe / That, from the sense of all civility, / I thus would play and trifle with your reverence:
ref: c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
text: “Miss Bennet,” replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, “you ought to know, that I am not to be trifled with […]”
ref: 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter 56, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC:
text: But a Judge may not trifle with the Law because the society is defective.
ref: 1948, Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country, Penguin, published 1958, Book 2, Chapter 11, p. 171:
glosses: To deal with something as if it were of little importance or worth.
examples: text: […] playing and trifling are completely banished out of my mind […]
ref: 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter 27, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC:
text: But he was terribly roused too and bound to go on; he wasn’t just trifling but intended something.
ref: 1953 September 18, Saul Bellow, chapter XIX, in The Adventures of Augie March […], New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →OCLC, page 405:
glosses: To act, speak, or otherwise behave with jest.
examples: text: Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass and cast his eyes up at the ceiling […]
ref: 1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 28, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC:
text: She sat in a café, trifling with her coffee spoon.
ref: 1965, Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate, New York: Fawcett, published 1967, Part 1, Chapter 6, p. 151:
glosses: To inconsequentially toy with something.
examples: text: We trifle time: I pray thee, pursue sentence.
ref: c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
text: For an honest and sober man will rather make that woman his wife, whom he seeth employed continually about her business, than one who makes it her business to trifle away her own and others time.
ref: 1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London: T. Passinger, page 62:
text: As it was, he did nothing with much zeal, but sport; and his time was otherwise trifled away, without benefit from books or anything else.
ref: 1817 (date written), [Jane Austen], chapter VI, in Persuasion; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volume (please specify |volume=III or IV), London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC:
text: You who have known neither sorrow nor pleasure; who have trifled your life away!
ref: 1925, Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1985, page 189:
glosses: To squander or waste.
examples: text: […] but this sore night / Hath trifled former knowings.
ref: c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv]:
glosses: To make a trifle of, to make trivial.
Synonyms: sense: toy with
word: fiddle
sense: squander
word: fritter
sense: squander
word: wanton
Derived terms: trifle with