post-mortem human subjects

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Nov 5 04:36:12 UTC 2010


Interesting that you mention "trivium". I was just helping my 8yo to set
up a mock-up of a page similar to those found in Animalia. His initial
pick was the letter Q, so everything on the page had to have a name (not
always trivial) that would start with Q--quails and quaggas being the
main actors.

One word we came up with in this context was "quadrivium". Of course,
that was connected to "trivium"--in at least one of its meanings.
Perhaps this is the reason why even individual factoids are normally
referred to as "trivia". Or, perhaps, there is a reason that more
directly relates to original morphology.

     VS-)

On 11/4/2010 5:45 AM, Paul Frank wrote:
> Here's a trivium for you: ...
> P.S. How come people don't singularize the word "trivia"?
>
> Paul Frank

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