When English speakers adopted the word trivial from Latin trivialis in the 16th century， they used it to mean just what its Latin ancestor meant: “found everywhere， commonplace.” But the source of trivialis is about something more specific: trivium， from tri- and via ， means “crossroads;place where three roads meet.” The link between the two presumably has to do with the commonplace sorts of things a person is likely to encounter at a busy crossroads. Today， the English word typically describes something barely worth mentioning. Such judgments are， of course， subjective;
