minim
see also: Minim
Etymology

From French minime.

Pronunciation
  • IPA: /ˈmɪ.nɪm/
Noun

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

Minim
Etymology

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

Noun

minim (plural minims)

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



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