[Ads-l] bikeshedding

[Dennis During]

See wiktionary: bikeshedding
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding> (current
form approximated in 2014)

See Wikipedia: Law_of_triviality
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality>.

On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 4:09 PM Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:

> New to me. Wiktionary's got it.
>
> Here's a usage with a gloss:
>
> "What struck me the most from that September 24 TLSS meeting, though,
> was that the committee spent ten minutes asking questions about flag
> football and no time asking questions about the proposed gender support
> plan. This is called bikeshedding, which is the tendency of groups to
> spend disproportionate amounts of time debating relatively simple or
> familiar issues while giving far less attention to complicated,
> consequential ones. This was a painful example."
>
> ---Aislinn Doyle, 29 Sept. 2026, WPS in Brief (Worcester, MA, USA)
>
> https://www.worcestersucks.email/p/wps-in-brief-september-2026
>
> ---Amy West
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
Dennis C. During

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org