Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Bagatelle
‖
Bagˊa-telle′
(băgˊȧ-tĕl′)
, Noun.
1.
A trifle; a thing of no importance.
Rich trifles, serious
bagatelles
. Prior.
2.
A game played on an oblong board, having, at one end, cups or arches into or through which balls are to be driven by a rod held in the hand of the player.
Webster 1828 Edition
Bagatelle
BAGATELLE
,Noun.
A trifle; a thing of no importance.
Definition 2024
Bagatelle
bagatelle
bagatelle
See also: Bagatelle
English
Noun
bagatelle (plural bagatelles)
- A trifle; an unsubstantial thing.
- 1850, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (volume 68, page 226)
- […] 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 […]
- 1879 (6 Sep), "Railway Projects", Railway World, 5 (36): 853
- The repayment of the cost of the western part of the road, whatever it might be, would be a mere bagatelle, for the older provinces would have been enriched by the stimulus given to business by the opening up of the plains, […]
- 1996, Edmund White, “The tea ceremony”, in Ploughshares, volume 22, page 190:
- They'd purchased a little house in the eighth arrondissement in Paris that for them was just a bagatelle, since they rarely lived there.
- 1850, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (volume 68, page 226)
- A short piece of literature or of instrumental music, typically light or playful in character.
- 2007, Norman Lebrecht, The Life And Death of Classical Music, page 7
- 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.
- 2007, Norman Lebrecht, The Life And Death of Classical Music, page 7
- A game similar to billiards played on an oblong table with pockets or arches at one end only.
- 1895, Hugh Legge, "The Repton Club", in John Matthew Knapp (ed.), The Universities and the Social Problem, page 139
- For some time they did nothing save box, but at last they went down to the bagatelle room, and played bagatelle for a bit. They marked this advance in civilization by prodding holes in the ceiling with the bagatelle cues, which gave the ceiling the appearance of a cloth target after a Gatling gun had been shooting at it.
- 1895, Hugh Legge, "The Repton Club", in John Matthew Knapp (ed.), The Universities and the Social Problem, page 139
- Any of several smaller, wooden table top games developed from the original bagatelle in which the pockets are made of pins; also called pin bagatelle, hit-a-pin bagatelle, jaw ball.
Synonyms
Translations
trifle
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