Learn English – Relation between “trivial”, “more than trivial”, and “less than trivial”

degree-of-comparisonphrase-meaning

I am a non-native speaker who thought understood the meaning of 'less than trivial' to mean more complicated than trivial. My intuition came from assuming that given an adjective then 'less than' would mean going less in the direction of the meaning of the adjective, the opposite direction. For example, 'less than happy', or 'less than pleased' to mean not so happy or somewhat displeased. See these links, although I don't know if they are considered reliable.

Then I saw someone using 'more than trivial' to mean (deduced from the context) more complicated than trivial.

I tried searching in Google, but couldn't find which one is the meaning of each.
A native speaker told me that to them 'less than trivial' sounded odd, but 'more than trivial' sounded more common (to them), and carrying the meaning above.

I just wanted to confirm these claims, or if not find the right meaning.

If they are not correct, is it true the generalization that I was making? Namely, that 'less than <adjective>' has a meaning that goes somewhat in the direction of the antonym of the <adjective>?

Not sure if degree-of-comparison is a tag that applies here. It didn't have a description.

Examples that I have found so far:

  • Here 'more than trivial' is being used to mean more complicated than trivial (material). This is an example contradicting my guess. By the way, maybe there is also a difference between 'more-than-trivial' and 'more than trivial', together with context.

  • This one seems to be using 'less than trivial' to mean more complicated than trivial. This is agreeing with my guess.

Best Answer

The syntax of comparative expressions is complex. A number of ellipsis (omissions) can occur. See here for some examples, although yours is not listed there.

The reason why the expressions in your question can be ambiguous is because they are comparative constructions in which the quality on which the comparatives are being compared is omitted.

The sentence

This is less than trivial.

has the structure

<comparative 1> is less [quality omitted] than <comparative 2>

where comparative 2 is an adjective serving as a noun, nominative adjective and the quality is assumed to be inferred by the reader from the nature of the adjective used as comparative 2.

Let's look at some possible versions without omitting the quality.

This is less [trivial] than trivial.

or

This is less [complex] than trivial.

In these the quality is explicit. I chose the two examples to produce phrases with opposing meanings. The first one means that 'This' is more complex than something that would be considered trivial, while the second means that 'This' is more trivial than something that would be considered trivial.

We could have chosen an entirely different quality from these two. The meaning in that case would change even more. For example,

This is less a synonym than trivial.

would mean than 'This' and 'trivial' are being compared as being synonyms of something and 'This' is losing the competition. This time 'trivial' refers to the word 'trivial', though. In written English would have either a different font or quotation marks.

For other adjectives it might be easier to apply even more qualities.

  • This is more than red.
  • This is more red than red.
  • This is more intense than red.
  • This is more low-frequency than red.
  • This is more romantic than red.

Having more options can make the phrase with the omitted quality even more ambiguous when looked without a context.

But then you have the cases in which due to the frequency of their usage the meaning is not ambiguous. For example,

I am more than happy to help.

means that I am very happy to help. The meaning is as if it were

I am more happy than happy to help.

The possibility of interpreting that the omitted quality could be, say, 'angry' as in

I am more angry than happy to help you.

is neglected because how much more frequently the first option is used.

Conclusion: The phrases with the general structure that you asked can be ambiguous, or not depending on the case, and on the context. Your searches about the specific examples of 'less than trivial' and 'more than trivial' indicate that people have used them both with the same intention. Therefore, the meaning would have to be inferred from the context. So, if it is you using it, then you better provide that context. If precision is essential, then one better use a less ambiguous phrase.

Trivial analysis that anyone can do:

  • This type of phrases cannot be an anastrophe, since there is no reordering of the words that yields a normal order sentence.
  • They are also not euphemisms. For example 'more than happy to help' definitely means happy.
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