minim

French minime

• IPA^(key): /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.
   • 1886, Robert Louis Stephenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde:

     He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders.

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.
   • John Milton, Paradise Lost

     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.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Edmund Spenser to this entry?)

• crotchet
• quaver
• semibreve

• minmi

Borrowed from Latin minimus.

• IPA^(key): /miˈniːm/
• Hyphenation: mi‧nim

minim (comparative minimer, superlative am minimsten)

1. (dated outside Switzerland) minimal

• minimal

Borrowed from English minimum, French minime, German Minimum, Italian minimo, Russian ми́нимум (mínimum), Spanish mínimo. Regarded as a shortened form of minime.

• IPA^(key): /miˈnim/

minim

1. least, lowest, minimum

   Antonym: maxim

• minimo (“minimum”)
• minima nombro (“quorum”)
• adminime (“at least, at the least”)

• plu
• min

minim m (feminine singular minima, masculine plural minims, feminine plural minimes)

1. least
2. minimum

minim

1. least

   Lo es li minim brav ek li fratros.

   He is the least brave of the brothers.

• maxim