[Ads-l] bikeshedding

[Dan Goncharoff]

The concept, including the bike shed, goes back to C. Notthcote Parkinson.

DanG

On Tue, Sep 29, 2026, 5:13 PM Ben Zimmer <
00001aae0710f4b7-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:

> 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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>

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