From French minime.

• IPA: /ˈmɪ.nɪm/

minim (plural minims)

1. (music) A half note, drawn as a semibreve with a stem.
2. A unit of volume, in the Imperial and U.S. customary systems, 1⁄60 fluid drachm. Approximately equal to 1 drop, 62 μL or 0.9 grain (weight) of water.
3. A short vertical stroke used in handwriting.
4. Anything very minute; applied to animalcula and the like.

   the minims of existence

5. (zoology) The smallest kind of worker in a leaf-cutter ant colony.
6. A little man or being; a dwarf.
   • 1667, John Milton, “(please specify the page number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC ↗:

     These as a line thir^[sic] long dimension drew,
     Streaking the ground with sinuous trace;
     not all Minims of Nature; some of Serpent kinde
     Wondrous in length and corpulence […]

7. A small fish; a minnow.
8. A short poetical encomium.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC ↗:

     To make one minim of thy poor handmaid

• French: blanche
• German: halbe Note
• Portuguese: mínima
• Russian: половинная нота
• Spanish: blanca

See minimum ("least"); so called to humble them even below the Franciscans, or "friars minor".

minim (plural minims)

1. A member of a Roman Catholic religious order of friars founded by Saint Francis of Paola in fifteenth-century Italy.