[Ads-l] bikeshedding

[Ben Zimmer]

Paul McFedries' Word Spy has it back to 2002:

https://wordspy.com/words/bikeshedding/

First noted here in 2012:

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2012-July/121028.html

--bgz

On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 4:40 PM Dennis During <
00001bcaf94bd005-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> 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
> >
>

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