trite

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin trītus (“worn, oft-trodden; of language, commonplace”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} the past participle of terō (“to rub, wear down”),^{[2][3][4][7][8]} from Proto-Indo-European *terə- (“to rub, turn”).^[2][5][7] The same Latin verb gave attrition, contrite and detriment,^[7] and Ayto, Barnhart and Klein connect its root with throw.^[9][3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Worn out by repetition, hackneyed: 1548, in Hall's Union.^[4][8][3] Etymonline and Dictionary.com put it in the 1540s.^[2][10]

Semantic evolution

The Latin participle already had the figurative meaning "much used, commonplace" when used of language, and English took that meaning first.^[2][4] The literal sense "rubbed, frayed, worn", also of a well-trodden road, appears only later, in the 1590s according to Etymonline and in 1601 in the OED, in Jonson's Fountaine of Selfe-love.^[2][4] It stayed rare, and Etymonline and Cresswell call it obsolete,^[2][11] though Collins keeps it as archaic.^[12] Cresswell finds behind the word the idea of wearing something away by use, and perhaps of irritating through repetition.^[11] Johnson (1755) defined it as "Worn out; stale; common; not new", and quoted Swift on "phrases batter'd, stale, and trite".^[13] Weekley compares the sense development of terse.^[14]

Timeline

• 1548 – worn out by repetition, hackneyed.^[4][8][3]
• 1590s – rubbed, frayed, worn.^[2] The OED's first record is 1601, in Jonson.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. So often used or repeated that it has lost its freshness or force; hackneyed, commonplace: a trite remark about the weather.^{[12][8][5][4]}
2. (archaic) Frayed or worn out by rubbing; of a path, well trodden.^[12][4]

Word family

• tritely
• triteness
• untrite

Related words

• attrition
• contrite
• contrition
• detriment
• triturate
• throw

Usage notes

A rare noun trite, pronounced /ˈtrɪtiː/, has a separate source: in ancient Greek music it is the third note down in an upper tetrachord, from Ancient Greek τρίτη (trítē), the feminine of τρίτος (trítos, “third”); the OED records it from 1603, in Holland's translation of Plutarch.^[4][15]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press