"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information"

"Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities, but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster"

"Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?"

This entry perhaps will you give you another insight into how my brain works. On the other hand you might just realise how sad my life can be. You might also treat this entry as a complete waste of time and skip past it. Either way, here it is.

I was reading a funny, and quite inciteful book in the loo yesterday. I've read it before, but it's been gathering dust on my shelf since then so I decided to give it another go. It's called 'Brainmen' and it's a humerous insight into quizzes, expecially pub quizzes and the kind of people who take part in them. It also gives a brief summary of the origins of the 'very British' phenomenum, including that memorable Christmas of 1987 when every decorated tree in England had a box of Trivial Pursuits underneath it. (including ours if I remember correctly)

You all must know by now I love trivia. I've written more pub quizzes than I care to mention, hosted big events for whole companies in plush hotel suites, (including spoof versions of Millionaire and Weakest Link). Appeared on three TV shows (well the third one is yet to air, but we hold out hope for November now) In all this time, there is one thing that has never occured to me...

...Where does the word trivia come from?

Ok, at first glance it's a Latin word, and to most people that would be enough, but my brain didn't stop there. My Latin GCSE studies are a long time ago, but I still recognise the two parts of the word. Tri realing to the number 3 and via which relates to roads and passages. If that is correct then trivia really means three roads, or perhaps where three roads come together. What has that got to do with knowing the capital of Venezuela or who scored the winning goal in the 1985 FA Cup Final?...

...so I looked it up.

Here comes the explanation of the origin of the word. If you're already bored you can switch off now.

It is a Latin word and it does relate to an area where three roads come together. If it were four roads it would be a quadrivia etc. Still doesn't explain the current usage though does it.

Well now you have to jump forward to Medieval education. Teachings in the early part of a student's life would be concerned with three forms, Rhetoric, Grammar and Logic. After these were mastered, a pupil would move on to the next four stages of learning, Arithmetic, Astronomy, Geometry and Music.

They kept the Latin words too, the three ways of learning to begin with were the trivium or trivia and the four advanced pathways of learning became known as the quadrivium. By that token, trivia was seen as the things of little or no importance compared with the more important quadrivia.

....aren't you glad you know that now!


(p.s. The capital city is Caracas and Norman Whiteside scored the winning goal for Man Utd against Everton despite being down to ten men after Kevin Moran became the first person to be sent off in an FA Cup Final)