Trivia What?
You may be quizzed later 😉
Definition of trivia
triv·ia | trɪviə
When you hear the word Trivia, you might think of answering questions on pop culture and geography with your friends around a pub table, or going around a board collecting six colored wedges in a pie. This common sense of the word refers not just to knowledge, but a particular kind of knowledge: obscure facts and details that aren't applicable to one's day-to-day life.
Legend has it that travelers would meet at the intersection of three crossroads to exchange news, gossip, and tiny interesting facts. Some think the word trivia derives from this idea.
Trivia was introduced in the early 20th century as the
noun form of the word trivial
which comes from the Latin
trivialis.
Trivialis means that which is in, or belongs to, the
crossroads or public streets; hence, that may be found everywhere,
common. It is derived from trivium
which means a place where
three roads meet.
Modern Use, Bits of information of little consequence was the title of a popular book by British aphorist Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), first published in 1902 but popularized in 1918. It consisted of short essays often tied to observation of small things and commonplace moments. In the 1918 version of his book Trivia, Smith wrote:
I KNOW too much; I have stuffed too many of the facts of History and Science into my intellectuals. My eyes have grown dim over books; believing in geological periods, cave dwellers, Chinese Dynasties, and the fixed stars has prematurely aged me.Read more about this
What good can knowing the capital of Croatia really serve? You’d be surprised.
Whether or not you got the answer to that question, you might be
wondering what its purpose was in the first place.
That’s such a trivial thing to ask!
you may say. While such a
declaration wouldn’t be completely amiss, it would overlook some
underlying crucial points. Yes, trivia questions asking for things
such as the capital city of a Balkan state may seem pointless but, if
you are willing to dig deeper, you might find that there is more to
trivia than meets the eye.
One of trivia’s primary benefits is that it enables you to learn a
surprising amount about a wide variety of subjects. What makes trivia
so challenging (and fun) is that the questions can come from
virtually any area of knowledge known to man. One minute, you may be
trying to come up with the name of the peace settlement that ended the
Mexican-American War (the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo), and
the next, you may be racking your brain in an effort to name the
greatest album of all time topped by
Marvin Gaye's What's Going On (1971)
Did you know that Barbra Streisand has cloned her dog twice? 🤯
Finally, it must be said that trivia should never be equated with
intelligence. Knowing that
Johannes Vermeer
painted Meisje met de parel
doesn't necessarily mean
that one is smarter than everyone else; it just means that one knows
that Johannes Vermeer painted
Meisje met de parel
. Thus, you shouldn’t feel stupid if you fail to know the response to
trivia questions; rather, you should take note of the correct answers
and try to remember them the next time they are mentioned.
📣BTW, if you didn’t knew: the capital of Croatia is Zagreb. File that little tidbit away in your brain, you never know when you might need it.
Trivia moment
Trivia Question: How many ribs are in a human body?
- 12
- 28
- 36
- 24