Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a trifling manner; with levity; without seriousness or dignity.

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

  • adverb In a trifling manner

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Although it had practically demonstrated that the lesser can contain the greater, the snake was but triflingly increased in girth.

    My Tropic Isle 2003

  • Paul does not, by thus reasoning, impute tyranny to God, as the sophists triflingly allege in speaking of his absolute power.

    Commentary on Genesis - Volume 2 1509-1564 1996

  • Whence it appears how foolishly the Papists are deceived, who triflingly argue, that men are led away by the doctrine of faith from the desire of doing well.

    Commentary on Genesis - Volume 1 1509-1564 1996

  • It is, in fact, more triflingly fashionable than soundly reasonable, to seek to define the line of demarcation between the special callings of medicine and surgery, for it will ever be as vain an endeavour to separate the one from the other without extinguishing the vitality of both, as it would be to sunder the trunk from the head, and give to each a separate living existence.

    Surgical Anatomy Joseph Maclise

  • The party was in high spirits -- lounging about and jesting -- speaking sometimes of trifling matters very seriously, and of serious matters as triflingly -- and exercising their wit in particular to great advantage on their absent friends and their affairs.

    Stories by Foreign Authors: German — Volume 2 Various

  • Both her conscience and her nature seemed to be all alive to the rules of our Discipline: "Never be unemployed;" "Never be triflingly employed."

    Elizabeth: the Disinherited Daughter By E. Ben Ez-er Elizabeth Arnold Hitchcock

  • If I seem to speak triflingly, my dear Johns, I pray you excuse me; it is only my business way of stating the actual facts in the case.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 Various

  • It must be practiced only in a serious, reverential mood, and must not be approached triflingly or lightly.

    The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath William Walker Atkinson 1897

  • "Now, now," said one of them, "it becomes not to deal so triflingly with matters of weight."

    By What Authority? Robert Hugh Benson 1892

  • For indeed for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled.

    A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889

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