Bagatelle

Quick meaning: Bagatelle is a noun meaning A trifle; an insubstantial thing.

Meaning

A trifle; an insubstantial thing.

More Meanings

1. (literature, music) A short piece of literature or of instrumental music, typically light or playful in character.
2. (uncountable) A game similar to billiards played on an oblong table with pockets or arches at one end only.
3. (uncountable) Any of several smaller wooden tabletop games developed from the original bagatelle in which the pockets are made of pins.
4. (intransitive, rare) To meander or move around, in a manner similar to the ball in the game of bagatelle.
5. (transitive, rare) To bagatellize; to regard as a bagatelle.

Example Sentences

Sir C. Oh! dear madam, don't ask me, it's a very foolish song—a mere bagatelle. Char. Oh! Sir Callaghan, I will admit of no excuse.

They'd purchased a little house in the eighth arrondissement in Paris that for them was just a bagatelle, since they rarely lived there.

One afternoon in 1920. a young pianist sat down in a shuttered room in the capital of defeated Germany and played a Bagatelle by Beethoven.

[…] the jails were larger and fuller, the number of murders was incomparably greater, the thefts and swindlings in the old country were a bagatelle to the large depredations there […]

Word Forms

• bagatelles
• bagatelling
• bagatelled

Synonyms for bagatelle

Depending on context, synonyms include bric-a-brac, dicky, dicky-bird, fico, fig, flamfew.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include frivolity, frippery, fluff, trifle, trinket, thinglet.

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