bagatelle [bag-uh-tel]

noun:
1 something of little value or importance; a trifle
2 a game played on a board having holes at one end into which balls are to be struck with a cue
3 a short literary or musical piece in light style

Examples:

If anything, the slowly accumulating final chord of the bagatelle could have set up the softly arpeggiated one at the start of 'Twilight Way', the first of the 'Poetic Tone Pictures.' (Joshua Barone, Review: Dvorak’s 'Poetic Tone Pictures’ Makes Its Carnegie Debut, New York Times, February 2023)

Pinball got its start in 18th-century France with the billiardslike tabletop game bagatelle, which used a springlike launcher. (World-ranked pinball wizard is reviving the game in San Antonio with a new startup, san Antonio Express-News, March 2020)

When you are caught in a web of conspiracies, the best of deeds becomes a mere bagatelle, as we find in the fall of Udensi. (Henry Akubuiro, Travails of a Good Samaritan , The Sun Nigeria, March 2021)

Among the most divisive issues in philosophy today is whether there is anything important to be said about the essential nature of truth. Bullshit, by contrast, might seem to be a mere bagatelle. (Jim Holt, Say Anything, The New Yorker, August 2005)

'Overdue; was the title he had decided for it, and its length he believed would not be more than sixty thousand words - a bagatelle for him with his splendid vigor of production. (Jack London, Martin Eden)

The betrayal of one's friends is a bagatelle in the stakes of love, but the betrayal of oneself is a lifelong regret. (Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love)

Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand organ - all gone, and jewels, too. (Virginia Woolf, 'The Mark on the Wall')

Origin:

1630s, 'a trifle, thing of no importance,' from French bagatelle 'knick-knack, bauble, trinket' (16c.), from Italian bagatella 'a trifle,' which is perhaps a diminutive of Latin baca 'berry,' or from one of the continental words (such as Old French bague 'bundle') from the same source as English bag. As 'a piece of light music,' it is attested from 1827. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

boondoggle [boon-dog-uhl, -daw-guhl]

noun:
1 a wasteful and worthless project undertaken for political, corporate, or personal gain, typically a government project funded by taxpayers
2 work of little or no value done merely to keep or look busy
3 a product of simple manual skill, as a plaited leather cord for the neck or a knife sheath, made typically by a camper or a scout
verb:
to deceive or attempt to deceive

Examples:

These subsidies are a boondoggle for taxpayers, who have spent nearly $30 billion on stadiums over the past 34 years, not counting property-tax exemptions or federal revenues lost to tax-exempt municipal bonds. (Dan Moore, Taxpayers Are About to Subsidize a Lot More Sports Stadiums, The Atlantic, October 2022)

Admittedly, he explains, "many of these boondoggles were hare-brained ideas to begin with, others were solid ideas that went wrong operationally or were short of financing," a not unusual problem in the Atlantic provinces. (Burton K Janes, The boondoggles of Newfoundland and Labrador, Saltwire, September 2017)

Some commentators have called for the Olympics - or, to be more blunt, the IOC's financial boondoggle - to be scrapped altogether. (Ishaan Tharoor, Japan's Olympics kick off amid a cascade of disasters, Washington Post, July 2021)

No matter how well you plan, something will boondoggle in unexpected ways. But having a plan means that you can improvise a solution. (Renee Bates, Favorite Finds - In Nashville, Hersavvy, June 2014)

The United States has not embarked upon its formidable program of space exploration in order to make or perpetuate a gigantic astronautic boondoggle. There are good reasons, hard reasons for this program. (George Saintsbury, 'The Practical Values of Space Exploration: Report of the Committee on Science and Astronautics, US House of Representatives, Eighty-Sixth Congress, Second Session')

Origin:

When boondoggle popped up in the early 1900s, lots of people tried to explain where the word came from. One theory traced it to an Ozarkian word for 'gadget', while another related it to the Tagalog word that gave us boondocks. Another hypothesis suggested that boondoggle came from the name of leather toys Daniel Boone supposedly made for his dog. But the only theory that is supported by evidence is much simpler. In the 1920s, Robert Link, a scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of America, apparently coined the word to name the braided leather cords made and worn by scouts. The word came to prominence when such a boondoggle was presented to the Prince of Wales at the 1929 World Jamboree, and it's been with us ever since. Over time, it developed the additional sense describing a wasteful or impractical project. (Merriam-Webster)

behemoth [bih-hee-muhth, bee-uh-]

noun:
1 a mighty animal described in Job 40:15–24 as an example of the power of God
2 any creature or thing of monstrous size or power

Examples:

He praised the Strand for "standing up against a behemoth like Amazon. I mean, the fact that they still exist is impressive." (Micah Hauser, Is the Strand a Landmark?, The New Yorker, March 2019)

Built in phases between 1929 and the mid 1950s, London’s Battersea Power Station is, in a word, a behemoth. For scale, the entirety of St Paul's Cathedral could fit neatly within the plant's vast boiler house. (Mayer Rus, Tour a Fresh, Contemporary Home That's Located in a London Landmark, Architectural Digest, August 2023)

Here's a descending list of the world's biggest, heaviest and longest snakes, from the smallest of the serpent giants through to the largest to have ever existed - a behemoth the size of a Tyrannosaurus rex. (Emma Bryce, The biggest snake in the world (and 10 other giant serpents), Architectural Digest, April 2024)

He tells the tedious story of how, before the birth of Man, the world used to be ruled by colossal behemoth monsters, monsters hundreds of miles long! (David H Keller, 'The Last Magician')

A dozen candles burned themselves to death on the shelf before me. Each of my breaths made them tremble. To them, I was a behemoth, to frighten and destroy. (Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings)

Far beneath, they saw a colossal structure of curved and glittering girders, like the strangely articulated bones of a metal behemoth outstretched along the bottom of the pit. (Clark Ashton Smith, Vulthoom)

Origin:

late 14c, huge biblical beast (Job xl.15), from Latin behemoth, from Hebrew b'hemoth, usually taken as plural of intensity of b'hemah 'beast'. But the Hebrew word is perhaps a folk etymology of Egyptian pehemau, literally 'water-ox,' the name for the hippopotamus. Used in modern English for any huge beast. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

In the biblical book of Job, Behemoth is the name of a powerful grass-eating, river-dwelling beast with bones likened to bronze pipes and limbs likened to iron bars. Scholars have speculated that the biblical creature was inspired by the hippopotamus, but details about the creature’s exact nature are vague. The word first passed from Hebrew into Latin, where, according to 15th century English poet and monk John Lydgate it referred to 'a beast rude full of cursednesse'. In modern English, behemoth mostly functions as an evocative term for something of monstrous size, power, or appearance. (Merriam-Webster)