Trivial means unimportant, insignificant, or not worth worrying about. When something is trivial, it's so minor that it barely matters. A trivial mistake on your homework might be writing “teh” instead of “the”: technically an error, but one that doesn't affect anyone's understanding. A trivial difference between two stories might be that one mentions a red car and the other mentions a blue car, when the car's color has nothing to do with what happens.

The word often appears when someone wants to dismiss a concern or show that something isn't worth the attention it's getting. If two friends argue about a trivial matter like who should go through a door first, they're spending energy on something that really doesn't matter. Scientists might describe a problem as non-trivial when they want to emphasize that it's actually quite difficult and important, even if it sounds simple.

Be careful, though: what seems trivial to one person might matter greatly to another. A baseball card might seem like a trivial possession to a parent, but to the child who collected it, that card could represent weeks of saving allowance and trading with friends.