trivium

What it means

1. historicaleducationThe lower division of the liberal arts in a medieval university; grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

   Surely some demon must possess the lad, / Who showed more wit than ever school-boy had, / And learned his Trivium thus without the rod; / But Alcuin said it was the grace of God.

   1873 August, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “[I. Tales of a Wayside Inn.] The Student’s Tale. Emma and Eginhard.”, in Aftermath, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 23

   3 more examples

   As to the nature of his studies, there can be no doubt that he [Dante] went through the trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) of the then ordinary university course.

   1876, James Russell Lowell, Among My Books, Second series

   We find in a broad survey of schools in general that there has also been a disposition to develop a special training in thought and expression either in the mother tongue (as in the Roman schools of Latin oratory), or in the culture tongue (as in Roman schools of Greek oratory), and we find the same element in the mediaeval trivium.

   1903, H. G. Wells, Mankind in the Making, Chapman & Hall

   The riddle of existence is the college curriculum that was laid before the Pharaohs, that was taught in the groves by Plato, that formed the trivium and quadrivium, and is to-day laid before the freedmen’s sons by Atlanta University.

   1903 April 18, W[illiam] E[dward] Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., →OCLC

2. biologyThe three anterior ambulacra of echinoderms, collectively.

In a sentence

Surely some demon must possess the lad, / Who showed more wit than ever school-boy had, / And learned his Trivium thus without the rod; / But Alcuin said it was the grace of God.

1873 August, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “[I. Tales of a Wayside Inn.] The Student’s Tale. Emma and Eginhard.”, in Aftermath, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 23

Where it comes from

1. Latintrivium
2. Englishtrivium

PIE word *tréyes Borrowed from Latin trivium.