trifle
/ˈtɹaɪfəl/ verb C2- To deal with something as if it were of little importance or worth. · You must not trifle with her affections.
- To act, speak, or otherwise behave with jest.
- To inconsequentially toy with something.
- To squander or waste.
He/she/it trifles · Past trifled · Past participle trifled · -ing form trifling
Verb forms
- Base form
- trifle
- He/she/it
- trifles
- Past
- trifled
- Past participle
- trifled
- -ing form
- trifling
From the library
“Certainly,” continued Danglars, “the sacrifice was no trifling one, when the beauty of the bride is concerned.
“Why,” replied he, “I think it just possible Dantès may have been detected with some trifling article on board ship considered here as contraband.”
“Ah,” said the Marquise de Saint-Méran, a woman with a stern, forbidding eye, though still noble and distinguished in appearance, despite her fifty years—“ah, these revolutionists, who have driven us from those very possessions they afterwards purchased for a mere trifle during the Reign of Terror, would be compelled to own, were they here, that all true devotion was on our side, since we were content to follow the fortunes of a falling monarch, while they, on the contrary, made their fortune by worshipping the rising sun; yes, yes, they could not help admitting that the king, for whom we sacrificed rank, wealth, and station was truly our ‘Louis the well-beloved,’ while their wretched usurper has been, and ever will be, to them their evil genius, their ‘Napoleon the accursed.’ Am I not right, Villefort?”
It would be, he felt assured, no trifling ordeal.
Other matches
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