una bagatela de la lengua

So... as you know, I subscribe to Dictionary.com's "Word of the Day," which most of the time doesn't teach me anything new, although it comes up with a few gems now and again. (I've got to find a better/more challenging word-a-day subscription.) I would recommend Dictionary.com to high school students or college freshmen, however, who are trying to be more educated and/or do well on the SATs, write better essays, sound more erudite, whatevs... But I'm kind of past that point as an educated English speaker (to toot my own horn).

Anyhoo, I decided that in addition to an English word-o-the-day, I also really needed to subscribe to a SPANISH word-of-the-day. Past the intermediate level of Spanish, all vocab learning is supposed to be independent or intuitive, and I for one really miss it, since I do so enjoy vocab lists. It's a great way to learn words. I find it very logical and pleasing to have a group of words which are semantically/thematically related presented all at once for absorption as a group. It's fun! And makes learning easy! (Buy today for only $29.95!!!!!!)

But, barring the formal presentation of pretty vocab lists in a classroom setting, a word-a-day is a good way to take in a little vocabulary at a time. It's like Cher says in the movie Clueless, "We have got to work on your vocabulary, Tai... Try using it [sporadic] in a sentence today." So, a word-a-day enables you to focus on one word, practice it, and therefore retain it. It's sort of like how Catholics have a scripture reading every day (one Old Testament, one New Testament) to ruminate about; so I have a word a day. In Spanish. I found this groovy website, castellano.org, wherein one can subscribe to a "palabra-del-día" listserv. Woot woot. So, the one for today is pretty cool. For those of you who read Spanish:

bagatela

Es algo de poco valor o de poca importancia. Proviene del italiano bagattelle, lengua en la cual también tiene el significado de ‘cosa sin importancia’. La palabra se formó en italiano a partir del bajo latín baga (pequeña prenda de ropa) cuyo diminutivo era bagatta. El vocablo original ya aludía a algo pequeño y el diminutivo a algo menor aun, pero el italiano se caracteriza por tener en ciertos casos un diminutivo del diminutivo (Ver fettucine), de modo que bagatta tiene el diminutivo bagattella, algo realmente insignificante. La palabra llegó también al francés bagatelle, con el mismo significado.
El etimólogo alemán del siglo XIX Hugo Schuchardt, por su parte, sugiere que el origen no sería baga sino baca, que en latín significaba ‘pequeño objeto redondo’ pero, en todo caso, la evolución posterior de la palabra sería la misma. En la primera edición del Diccionario de la Academia, bagatela aparecía así definida:

Cosa menuda, de poca substancia, sin valor.

La palabra aparece en castellano en el siglo XVII, y la encontramos por esa época en textos de Calderón de la Barca y de Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, entre otros.