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A trifling, chattering, fop or coxcomb. "To be so pestered with a popinjay." Shak.

in literature, the pragmatic, or philosophical, method. The narration of this apparently trifling circumstance belongs to the pragmatism of the history. A. Murphy.

Talk to little purpose; trifling talk; unmeaning loquacity. Sick of tops, and poetry, and prate. Pope.

Trifling or childish tattle; empty talk; loquacity on trivial subjects; prate; babble. Mere prattle, without practice. Shak.

Empty talk; trifling loquacity; prattle; -- used in contempt or ridicule. [Colloq.] Abp. Bramhall.

Boyish; childish; trifling; silly. The French have been notorious through generations for their puerile affectation of Roman forms, models, and historic precedents. De Quincey.

A shift or turn from the point in question; a trifling or evasive distinction; an evasion; a cavil. Quibbles have no place in the search after truth. I. Watts.

Triflingly; evasively.

A trifling nicety; a cavil; a quibble. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers now. Coleridge.

To spend time in trifling employments, or to attend to useful subjects in an indifferent or superficial manner; to dawdle.

rent for a half-penny in Ireland in the early part of the eighteenth century; any coin of trifling value. Many counterfeits passed about under the name of raps. Swift. Tie it [her money] up so tight that you can't touch a rap, save with her consent. Mrs. Alexander. Not to care a rap, to care nothing. -- Not worth a ra…

Fright; esp., sudden fright produced by a trifling cause, or originating in mistake. [Colloq.]

One who gathers and hoards money in trifling sums; a miser.

Important; weighty; not trifling; grave. The holy Scriptures bring to our ears the most serious things in the world. Young.

n yarn, marline, and the smallest kinds of rope. R. H. Dana, Jr. -- Small talk, light or trifling conversation; chitchat. -- Small wares (Com.), various small textile articles, as tapes, braid, tringe, and the like. M`Culloch.

A trifling or second-rate thing or person. [Obs.]

ated; hence, nice to excess in taste; fastidious; easily disgusted; apt to be offended at trifling improprieties. Quoth he, that honor's very squeamish That takes a basting for a blemish. Hudibras. His muse is rustic, and perhaps too plain The men of squeamish taste to entertain. Southern. So ye grow squeamish, Gods, a…

One who pertinaciously contends for some trifling things, as a point of etiquette; an unreasonable, obstinate contender; as, a stickler for ceremony. The Tory or High-church were the greatest sticklers against the exorbitant proceedings of King James II. Swift.

Idle talk or chat; trifling talk; prate. [They] told the tattle of the day. Swift.

gnification, formerly used as expressive of contempt, or when anything said was reject as trifling or impertinent. [Written also tille-vally, tilly-fally, tille-fally, and otherwise.] Shak.