All 43 Uses of
minute
in
Middlemarch
- In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed.
Chpt 1 (definition 1)minute = small
- …he was enamoured of that arduous invention which is the very eye of research, provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more exactness of relation; he wanted to pierce the obscurity of those minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, and crime, that delicate poise and transition which determine the growth of happy or unhappy consciousness.
Chpt 2 (definition 2)minute = detailed
- Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun.
Chpt 3 (definition 1)minutely = very slightly
- Such conditions are often minutely represented in our petty lifetimes.
Chpt 4 (definition 1) *minutely = in a small way
- Raffles denied this with solemn adjurations; the fact being that the links of consciousness were interrupted in him, and that his minute terror-stricken narrative to Caleb Garth had been delivered under a set of visionary impulses which had dropped back into darkness.
Chpt 7 (definition 2)minute = detailed
- He had taken the precaution of bringing opium in his pocket, and he gave minute directions to Bulstrode as to the doses, and the point at which they should cease.
Chpt 7 (definition 2) *
Uses with a very common or rare meaning:
- She felt some disappointment, of which she was yet ashamed, that there was nothing for her to do in Lowick; and in the next few minutes her mind had glanced over the possibility, which she would have preferred, of finding that her home would be in a parish which had a larger share of the world's misery, so that she might have had more active duties in it.†
Chpt 1 (definition 3)
- He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- He had gathered, as an industrious man always at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities, and his private charities were both minute and abundant.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- He came like a pleasant change in the light, arresting little Louisa with fatherly nonsense as she was being led out of the room by Miss Morgan, greeting everybody with some special word, and seeming to condense more talk into ten minutes than had been held all through the evening.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- Any man who wants to do justice does not wait till the last minute to hear both sides of the question.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- I have only seen her once before, for a couple of minutes, when my cousin introduced her to me, just before I left England.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- She waited a minute or two, but when she passed into the next room there were just signs enough that she had been crying to make her open face look more youthful and appealing than usual.†
Chpt 2 (definition 3)
- Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's fetlock, turned sideways in his saddle, and watched the horse's action for the space of three minutes, then turned forward, twitched his own bridle, and remained silent with a profile neither more nor less sceptical than it had been.†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- He knew some anecdotes about the heroes of the turf, and various clever tricks of Marquesses and Viscounts which seemed to prove that blood asserted its pre-eminence even among black-legs; but the minute retentiveness of his memory was chiefly shown about the horses he had himself bought and sold; the number of miles they would trot you in no time without turning a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of passionate asseveration, in which he would assist the imagination…†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- "Caleb will be in again in a few minutes," said Mrs. Garth, who imagined some trouble between Fred and his father.†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- In two minutes he was in the room, and Rosamond went out, after waiting just long enough to show a pretty anxiety conflicting with her sense of what was becoming.†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- In the first minutes when Dorothea looked out she felt nothing but the dreary oppression; then came a keen remembrance, and turning away from the window she walked round the room.†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her, unable to speak or move, gasping for breath.†
Chpt 3 (definition 3)
- He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and they sat quite still for many minutes which flowed by them like a small gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it.†
Chpt 4 (definition 3)
- In another minute he was in the library, and Dorothea was meeting him with her sweet unconstrained smile.†
Chpt 4 (definition 3)
- Will you ask her if she can see me—see Mrs. Casaubon, for a few minutes?†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- In the five minutes' drive to the Hospital she had time for some reflections that were quite new to her.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- Two minutes later, when Mr. Casaubon came out of the vestry, and, entering the pew, seated himself in face of Dorothea, Will felt his paralysis more complete.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- She had been sitting still for a few minutes, but not in any renewal of the former conflict: she simply felt that she was going to say "Yes" to her own doom: she was too weak, too full of dread at the thought of inflicting a keen-edged blow on her husband, to do anything but submit completely.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, "I will tell you what we can do.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- Mr. Farebrother was silent for a minute or more, and then, as they turned and paused under the shadow of a maple at the end of a grassy walk, said, "I understand that you resist any attempt to fetter you, but either your feeling for Fred Vincy excludes your entertaining another attachment, or it does not: either he may count on your remaining single until he shall have earned your hand, or he may in any case be disappointed.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation of whist, or even than the writing of penitential meditations.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- Five minutes before, the expanse of his life had been submerged in its evening sunshine which shone backward to its remembered morning: sin seemed to be a question of doctrine and inward penitence, humiliation an exercise of the closet, the bearing of his deeds a matter of private vision adjusted solely by spiritual relations and conceptions of the divine purposes.†
Chpt 5 (definition 3)
- "Wait a minute, and I'll come back presently, and have a round with you all in turn, if you like," said Fred, who felt confidence in his power of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- I shall not be five minutes.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3) *
- When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly a minute, during which Mr. Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned the key emphatically.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- They were in animated discussion on some subject which was dropped when he entered, and Mary was copying the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet drawers, in a minute handwriting which she was skilled in.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- It was as she had foreseen: when Fred had been asked to admire the fittings of the study, and she had been asked to admire the spider, Mr. Farebrother said— "Wait here a minute or two.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- I shall be back in a few minutes.†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the result was that he said, with some of the old emotion in his tone— "Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in the first trouble that has come."†
Chpt 6 (definition 3)
- He had watched for a couple of minutes or more the shudderings and pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when Raffles, with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round him in terror, trembling and gasping.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- I know you count your minutes.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- My servant will be back in a few minutes, and I shall then go myself to see what can be done for this unfortunate man.†
Chpt 7 (definition 3)
- And so they remained for many minutes, opposite each other, far apart, in silence; Will's face still possessed by a mute rage, and Rosamond's by a mute misery.†
Chpt 8 (definition 3)
- Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own—hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspect—could find no words, but involuntarily she put her lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck.†
Chpt 8 (definition 3)
- He fears he has offended you, and has begged me to ask if you will see him for a few minutes.†
Chpt 8 (definition 3)
- "No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute."†
Chpt 8 (definition 3)
Definitions:
-
(1) (minute as in: minute size) small, exceptionally small, or insignificant
-
(2) (minute as in: minute description) detailed (including even small considerations); and/or careful (done with care)
-
(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.