Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having four ways meeting in a point; leading in four directions.
  • Belonging to the quadrivium: thus, quadrivial astrology is astrology in the sense in which astrology is a branch of the quadrivium — that is, astronomy.
  • noun One of the four arts constituting the quadrivium.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having four ways meeting in a point.
  • noun One of the four “liberal arts” making up the quadrivium.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any of the four "liberal arts" making up the quadrivium.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • His part on logic reproduces Blemmydes™ Epitome logica with some additions; his part on natural philosophy combines works by Blemmydes with works by Pachymeres and Michael of Ephesus; his part on the quadrivial disciplines is identical with the Logic and Quadrivium by the anonymous of 1007.

    Byzantine Philosophy Ierodiakonou, Katerina 2008

  • It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs — a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travelers.

    Walking 1969

  • Aeneas and Dido (_Erec_, l. 5337); or when, in the same book, Erec's coronation mantle, though it is fairy work, bears no embroidered designs of Broceliande or Avalon, but four allegorical figures of the quadrivial sciences, with a reference by Chrestien to Macrobius as his authority in describing them.

    Epic and Romance Essays on Medieval Literature W. P. Ker

  • It would have had its _trivial_ and its _quadrivial_ schools; its occupation would have been research, experiment, or investigation; in a word, its whole features would have been colored by a grammatical, a rhetorical, or a mathematical cast, accordingly as it should have been derived from a sect in which any one of these three characteristics was the predominating influence.

    The Symbolism of Freemasonry Albert G. Mackey

  • It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs -- a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travellers.

    Harvard Classics Volume 28 Essays English and American Various

  • It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs, —a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travelers.

    Walking 1914

  • It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs—a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travellers.

    Walking [1862] 1909

  • It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs — a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travelers.

    Walking 1862

  • It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs, -- a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travellers.

    Excursions Henry David Thoreau 1839

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