2420: trifle Aug 6, 2021

The English cake 'trifle' comes from a French word meaning 'deception', but no one is entirely sure of where it came from. The French word ' truffe' (deception) can't be reliably traced back further, but after this point its meaning softened to merely that of 'mockery', and eventually just 'idle; unimportant'. This is likely where the cake's name comes in, as at that point the idea was only of something taken lightly. Eventually it came to mean something of insignificant value, or just small.