{"id":18550,"date":"2019-11-30T14:38:01","date_gmt":"2019-11-30T14:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18550"},"modified":"2019-11-30T14:39:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-30T14:39:34","slug":"where-three-roads-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=18550","title":{"rendered":"Where Three Roads Meet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/trivia.gif\" style=\"float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;\" alt=\"Trivia - where three roads meet\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\"><\/p>\n<p>I learned the other day that the word <strong>trivia<\/strong> (insignificant trifles of little importance), comes from the Latin <em>trivia<\/em>, the plural of <em>trivium<\/em> &#8211; crossroads, public space, or literally &#8220;a place where three roads meet&#8221;. From <em>tr\u0113s<\/em> (three) and <em>via<\/em> (road, street, way, journey, march, passage, way method).<\/p>\n<p>Apparently this term came to be used for anything commonplace. Also, beginners courses in universities used to be called <strong>trivium<\/strong>, and the word came be used to refer to things that are basic, simple or trivial [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/trivia\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p>The Latin word <em>via<\/em> comes from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*we\u01f5\u02b0-<\/em> (to bring, to transport), which is the root of such English words as way, wagon, wain (as in hay wain), weigh, wag, vehicle, vector, voyage, obvious and devious [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European\/we%C7%B5%CA%B0-\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I learned the other day that the word trivia (insignificant trifles of little importance), comes from the Latin trivia, the plural of trivium &#8211; crossroads, public space, or literally &#8220;a place where three roads meet&#8221;. From tr\u0113s (three) and via (road, street, way, journey, march, passage, way method). Apparently this term came to be used [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,15,45,78],"tags":[160,158,157,159],"class_list":["post-18550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-latin","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases","tag-crossroads","tag-etymology","tag-latin","tag-trivia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18550"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18556,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18550\/revisions\/18556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}