All 26 Uses of
minute
in
The Age of Innocence
- There was something about the luxury of the Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere, so charged with minute observances and exactions, that always stole into his system like a narcotic.
Chpt 21 (definition 1) *minute = small
- It had been one of the amusements of Archer's youth to wait for this annual pronouncement of his mother's, and to hear her enumerate the minute signs of disintegration that his careless gaze had overlooked.
Chpt 26 (definition 1)
Uses with a very common or rare meaning:
- No; at the last minute she decided not to.†
Chpt 3 (definition 2)
- "At the last minute?" he echoed, betraying his surprise that she should ever have considered the alternative possible.†
Chpt 3 (definition 2)
- There was a silence during which the tick of the monumental ormolu clock on the white marble mantelpiece grew as loud as the boom of a minute-gun.†
Chpt 7 (definition 2)
- The two chatted together for nearly twenty minutes; then the Countess rose and, walking alone across the wide drawing-room, sat down at Newland Archer's side.†
Chpt 8 (definition 2)
- "But your remembering each day to send them makes me love them so much more than if you'd given a standing order, and they came every morning on the minute, like one's music-teacher—as I know Gertrude Lefferts's did, for instance, when she and Lawrence were engaged."†
Chpt 10 (definition 2)
- One can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house, with all the doors wide open, and always a servant bringing tea, or a log for the fire, or the newspaper!†
Chpt 15 (definition 2)
- "If only this new dodge for talking along a wire had been a little bit nearer perfection I might have told you all this from town, and been toasting my toes before the club fire at this minute, instead of tramping after you through the snow," he grumbled, disguising a real irritation under the pretence of it; and at this opening Madame Olenska twisted the talk away to the fantastic possibility that they might one day actually converse with each other from street to street, or…†
Chpt 15 (definition 2)
- A sudden restlessness possessed him, and he was tongue-tied by the sense that their minutes were numbered, and that at any moment he might hear the wheels of the returning carriage.†
Chpt 18 (definition 2)
- The one thing that astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her made everything so simple.†
Chpt 18 (definition 2)
- Forty minutes, eh?†
Chpt 21 (definition 2)
- They got into the herdic, and as it drove off he took out his watch and saw that she had been absent just three minutes.†
Chpt 23 (definition 2)
- Archer had known for the last few minutes that the words were coming; but when they came they sent the blood rushing to his temples as if he had been caught by a bent-back branch in a thicket.†
Chpt 25 (definition 2)
- Archer handed the note to his senior partner, and a few minutes later was crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at Fourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth Avenue line.†
Chpt 27 (definition 2)
- Archer choked with the sense of wasted minutes and vain words.†
Chpt 29 (definition 2)
- After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard her say: "Newland!†
Chpt 30 (definition 2)
- She hadn't been here five minutes before I'd have gone down on my knees to keep her—if only, for the last twenty years, I'd been able to see where the floor was!"†
Chpt 30 (definition 2)
- "But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said: 'You sweet bird, you!†
Chpt 30 (definition 2)
- Yes, but in ten minutes more he would be mounting his own doorstep; and there were May, and habit, and honour, and all the old decencies that he and his people had always believed in ….†
Chpt 31 (definition 2)
- He sat down beside her and waited; but suddenly he heard a step echoing far off down the empty rooms, and felt the pressure of the minutes.†
Chpt 31 (definition 2)
- May sat without moving or speaking while the clock slowly measured out five minutes.†
Chpt 32 (definition 2)
- The amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps unbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had never loved it as he did at that minute.†
Chpt 33 (definition 2)
- No, sir: not a minute.†
Chpt 34 (definition 2) *
- It was long since it had thus plunged and reared under his widening waistcoat, leaving him, the next minute, with an empty breast and hot temples.†
Chpt 34 (definition 2)
- "It's more real to me here than if I went up," he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other.†
Chpt 34 (definition 2)
Definitions:
-
(1) (minute as in: minute size) small, exceptionally small, or insignificant
-
(2) (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.