2 meanings, 8 uses
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1 —7 uses as in:
minute size
Definition
small, exceptionally small, or insignificant
- Steering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows of brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale largely feeds.Chapters 58-60 — Brit; Squid; The Line (1% in)
minute = very small
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- There was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of the elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen, and heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style; only there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest wrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his continual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to windward;—for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed together.Chapters 16-18 — The Ship; The Ramadan; His Mark (13% in)
- Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye.Chapters 28-30 — Ahab; (Enter Ahab; to Him, Stubb); The Pipe (37% in)
- That protection could only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand, backed by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute atmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be subjected to.Chapters 46-48 — Surmises; The Mat-Maker; The First Lowering (16% in)
- Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart," or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese.Chapters 58-60 — Brit; Squid; The Line (67% in)
- Since I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me to approve myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not overlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him out to the uttermost coil of his bowels.Chapters 103-105 — Measurement of The Whale's Skeleton; The Fossil Whale; Does the Whale Diminish (26% in)
- Ahab's hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on and on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared; while from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was dimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.Chapters 130-132 — The Hat; The Pequod meets the Delight; The Symphony (45% in)
minutest = smallest
minutest = smallest
minute = small
minute = small
minutest = smallest
minute = small
There are no more uses of "minute" flagged with this meaning in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
(best examples)
2 —1 use as in:
minute description
Definition
detailed (including even small considerations); and/or careful (done with care)
- I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species, or—in this place at least—to much of any description.Chapters 31-33 — Queen Mab; Cetology; The Specksnyder (22% in)
minute = detailed
There are no more uses of "minute" flagged with this meaning in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
(best examples)