2 meanings
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1 —as in:
minute size; or minute description
Definition
very smallor:
detailed (including even small considerations)
- Even a minute amount of lead can be harmful to children.
minute = tiny
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- Don't eat a lot of poppy seeds for a few days before a drug test. They have a minute amount of a chemical that can cause a false positive when testing for heroin use.
- As she speaks Hana gives me a little wink and a minute shake of her head.Lauren Oliver -- Delirium
- He had drunk a few times before—minute quantities that his sister had given him at Woodson Street.Thomas Wolfe -- Look Homeward, Angel
- [T]his case ... requires no minute sifting of complicated facts,Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird
- The captain, as a military man, undertook to load it, putting in a minute quantity of powder.Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Brothers Karamazov
- There were minute amounts of ethanol in both Blane and Santorelli, but that was just the consequence of putrefaction.Dean Koontz -- Sole Survivor
- The smell of a strawberry arises from the interaction of at least 350 different chemicals that are present in minute amounts.Eric Schlosser -- Fast Food Nation
- The forest minutely vibrated.William Golding -- Lord of the Flies
- She got herself some basic science textbooks, a good dictionary, and a journal she'd use to copy passage after passage from biology textbooks: "Cell is a minute portion of living substance," she wrote.Rebecca Skloot -- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
minute = very small
or:
detailed (including even small considerations)
or:
detailed (including even small considerations)
minute = very small
minute = small
minutely = in a very tiny manner
minute = very small
2 —as in:
keep the minutes
Definition
a written record of what happened at a meeting- The secretary keeps the minutes of the meeting.
minutes of the meeting = formal notes of the meeting
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- I always review the minutes to make sure there are no errors.
- They also had tally sticks and the minutes of the last meeting.T. H. White -- The Once and Future King
- Do you remember—looking at page sixteen of the grand jury minutes, line ten—'You picked him out of the lineup?'Alice Sebold -- Lucky
- As secretary to the Praesidium he gave minutes of its most secret proceedings.John Le Carre -- The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
- According to the minutes, there was only one dissenting voice, and it was General George Clinton, not Lee, as he later implied.David G. McCullough -- 1776
- Not going to detail what new Congress did and said that session and later; minutes are available.Robert A. Heinlein -- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
- I'll take the minutes for you.Gloria Naylor -- The Women of Brewster Place
- Now we need someone else to take the minutes.Gloria Naylor -- The Women of Brewster Place
- She got the board to approve two decisions and enter them in the minutes.Stieg Larsson -- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
minutes = formal notes
More commonly:
Much more commonly, minute and minutes refer to a period of time lasting 60 seconds.
Less commonly, they refer to a measurement of angle where 60 minutes make up a single degree, and where a right angle has 90 degrees and a circle has 360 degrees.
Much less commonly, minute can refer to a single record of one of the things that happened at a meeting. This sense of the word is much more commonly seen in the form minutes as in "Have you read the minutes from the meeting?"