All 50 Uses of
minute
in
1984 by Orwell
- The scientist of today is either a mixture of psychologist and inquisitor, studying with real ordinary minuteness the meaning of facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice, and testing the truth-producing effects of drugs, shock therapy, hypnosis, and physical torture; or he is chemist, physicist, or biologist concerned only with such branches of his special subject as are relevant to the taking of life.
p. 193..9 (definition 1) *minuteness = attention to detail
- But there were other days when they settled down to their work almost eagerly, making a tremendous show of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda which were never finished — when the argument as to what they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily involved and abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions, enormous digressions, quarrels threats, even, to appeal to higher authority.
p. 294..9 (definition 2) *minutes = formal notes
Uses with a very common or rare meaning:
- It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Winston worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate.†
p. 9..8 (definition 3)
- At this moment O'Brien glanced at his wrist-watch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided to stay in the Records Department until the Two Minutes Hate was over.†
p. 11..6 (definition 3)
- The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure.†
p. 12..1 (definition 3)
- In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy.†
p. 14..1 (definition 3)
- The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in.†
p. 14..6 (definition 3)
- In the Two Minutes Hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this sub-human chanting of 'B-B!†
p. 17..0 (definition 3)
- He must leave in ten minutes.†
p. 27..8 (definition 3)
- The Physical Jerks would begin in three minutes.†
p. 31..6 (definition 3)
- Every few minutes the old man kept repeating: 'We didn't ought to 'ave trusted 'em.†
p. 33..6 (definition 3)
- Winston dialled 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay.†
p. 38..6 (definition 3)
- As for the third message, it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes.†
p. 39..3 (definition 3)
- Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.†
p. 40..1 (definition 3)
- Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.†
p. 40..1 (definition 3)
- In the long, windowless hall, with its double row of cubicles and its endless rustle of papers and hum of voices murmuring into speakwrites, there were quite a dozen people whom Winston did not even know by name, though he daily saw them hurrying to and fro in the corridors or gesticulating in the Two Minutes Hate.†
p. 42..0 (definition 3)
- Three messages had slid out of the pneumatic tube while Winston was working, but they were simple matters, and he had disposed of them before the Two Minutes Hate interrupted him.†
p. 43..7 (definition 3)
- Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards.†
p. 59..2 (definition 3)
- Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards.†
p. 59..2 (definition 3)
- But yesterday, at any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate, she had sat immediately behind him when there was no apparent need to do so.†
p. 61..9 (definition 3)
- He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control.†
p. 62..1 (definition 3)
- And then, for perhaps half a minute in all, something happened to the telescreens.†
p. 77..3 (definition 3)
- He let what he judged to be ten minutes go by, tormented all the while by the fear that some accident — a sudden draught blowing across his desk, for instance — would betray him.†
p. 79..2 (definition 3)
- Within another minute, perhaps, it would have crumbled into ashes.†
p. 79..3 (definition 3)
- Within three or four minutes he was out of the area which the bomb had affected, and the sordid swarming life of the streets was going on as though nothing had happened.†
p. 84..6 (definition 3)
- The alley led out into the main street, and down the next turning, not five minutes away, was the junk-shop where he had bought the blank book which was now his diary.†
p. 86..5 (definition 3)
- I'll give you in charge in 'alf a minute," I says.†
p. 91..9 (definition 3)
- Winston sat for a minute or two gazing at his empty glass, and hardly noticed when his feet carried him out into the street again.†
p. 92..9 (definition 3)
- But he lingered for some minutes more, talking to the old man, whose name, he discovered, was not Weeks-as one might have gathered from the inscription over the shop-front — but Charrington.†
p. 99..5 (definition 3)
- For a couple of minutes he had the feeling that he would die if he did not reach a lavatory soon.†
p. 101..5 (definition 3)
- As he turned it occurred to him that the girl had only passed him three minutes ago and that by running he could probably catch up with her.†
p. 101..7 (definition 3)
- The whole incident could not have taken as much as half a minute.†
p. 106..5 (definition 3)
- He went back to his cubicle, sat down, threw the fragment of paper casually among the other papers on the desk, put on his spectacles and hitched the speakwrite towards him. five minutes,' he told himself, 'five minutes at the very least!†
p. 107..2 (definition 3)
- He went back to his cubicle, sat down, threw the fragment of paper casually among the other papers on the desk, put on his spectacles and hitched the speakwrite towards him. five minutes,' he told himself, 'five minutes at the very least!†
p. 107..2 (definition 3)
- It was not till a couple of minutes later that the other, more probable explanation had occurred to him.†
p. 107..8 (definition 3)
- Eight minutes had gone by.†
p. 108..0 (definition 3) *
- Actually, all the possible ways of communicating with her had occurred to him within five minutes of reading the note; but now, with time to think, he went over them one by one, as though laying out a row of instruments on a table.†
p. 110..3 (definition 3)
- If there was any relief, it was in his work, in which he could sometimes forget himself for ten minutes at a stretch.†
p. 111..4 (definition 3)
- The queue edged forward till Winston was almost at the counter, then was held up for two minutes because someone in front was complaining that he had not received his tablet of saccharine.†
p. 111..8 (definition 3)
- The girl's table filled up a few minutes later.†
p. 112..3 (definition 3)
- There was perhaps a minute in which to act.†
p. 113..3 (definition 3)
- At five minutes past the hour the girl had still not appeared.†
p. 114..2 (definition 3)
- The lane widened, and in a minute he came to the footpath she had told him of, a mere cattle-track which plunged between the bushes.†
p. 118..2 (definition 3)
- The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity.†
p. 123..9 (definition 3)
- The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity.†
p. 124..0 (definition 3)
- As they drifted down the crowded pavements, not quite abreast and never looking at one another, they carried on a curious, intermittent conversation which flicked on and off like the beams of a lighthouse, suddenly nipped into silence by the approach of a Party uniform or the proximity of a telescreen, then taken up again minutes later in the middle of a sentence, then abruptly cut short as they parted at the agreed spot, then continued almost without introduction on the following day.†
p. 128..5 (definition 3)
- If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?'†
p. 133..4 (definition 3)
- They had only lagged behind the others for a couple of minutes, but they took a wrong turning, and presently found themselves pulled up short by the edge of an old chalk quarry.†
p. 134..2 (definition 3)
- I want you to turn your back on me for three minutes.†
p. 141..5 (definition 3)
- She suddenly twisted herself over in the bed, seized a shoe from the floor, and sent it hurtling into the corner with a boyish jerk of her arm, exactly as he had seen her fling the dictionary at Goldstein, that morning during the Two Minutes Hate.†
p. 144..2 (definition 3)
Definitions:
-
(1) (minute as in: minute description) detailed (including even small considerations); and/or careful (done with care)
-
(2) (minutes as in: keep the minutes) a written record of what happened at a meeting
-
(3) (meaning too common or rare to warrant focus) 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.