Unsubstantial vs Bagatelle - What's the difference?
unsubstantial | bagatelle |
A trifle; an unsubstantial thing.
* 1850 , Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (volume 68, page 226)
* 1879' (6 Sep), "Railway Projects", ''Railway World'', ' 5 (36): 853
*
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
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
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.
As an adjective unsubstantial
is (archaic).As a noun bagatelle is
a trifle; an unsubstantial thing.bagatelle
English
Noun
(en noun)- 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,
- 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.
- 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.