This week’s theme
Insults

This week’s words
nithing
barbermonger
varlet
applejohn
trifler

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(TRY-fuh-luhr)

MEANING:

noun: One not to be believed or taken seriously.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French trufleor (liar, cheat). Earliest documented use: 1382.

NOTES:

To trifle is to dabble, dawdle, or dance around the point and a trifler is the person doing all of the above with great flair and little substance (kind of like a meringue). The sort who’d bring a kazoo to a string quartet. The word also moonlights in metallurgy: a trifler can refer to one who works with trifle, a pewter alloy of medium hardness. Either way, triflers are never quite dealing in the heavy stuff.

USAGE:

“Voters attend debates to compare them, not triflers who want to see their names in print.”
Joan Little; Council Boots Away Soccer Opportunity; The Spectator (Hamilton, Canada); Sep 14, 2010.

“The poet lives, and dies, and is immortal; but the eternal trifler of all complexions never dies. The eternal trifler comes and goes, sucks blood of living men, is filled and emptied with the surfeit of each changing fashion. He gorges and disgorges, and is never fed. There is no nurture in him, and he draws no nurture from the food he feeds on. There is no heart, no soul, no blood, no living faith in him: the eternal trifler simply swallows and remains.”
Thomas Wolfe; You Can’t Go Home Again; Harper & Row; 1940.

See more usage examples of trifler in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: