All 41 Uses of
minute
in
Moby Dick
- 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.
Chpt 16-18minutest = smallest
- 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.
Chpt 28-30
- I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species, or—in this place at least—to much of any description.
Chpt 31-33 *minute = detailed
- 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.
Chpt 46-48minute = small
- 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.
Chpt 58-60 *minute = very small
- 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.
Chpt 58-60minute = small
- 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.
Chpt 103-105minutest = smallest
- 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.
Chpt 130-132minute = small
Uses with a meaning too common or too rare to warrant foucs:
- In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his shipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with them, they raised a cry of "Bulkington!†
Chpt 1-3
- For three minutes or more he was seen swimming like a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by turns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam.†
Chpt 13-15
- A few minutes more, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with the other dragging a lifeless form.†
Chpt 13-15
- Now, it being Christmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had biting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the southward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed, gradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable weather behind us.†
Chpt 28-30
- Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in, that in less than "ten minutes" she settled down and fell over.†
Chpt 43-45
- Again, it is very often observed that, if the sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts, not so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of destruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent indication of his character, that upon being attacked he will frequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for several consecutive minutes.†
Chpt 43-45
- Dough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact minute to Ahab.†
Chpt 46-48
- In obedience to a sign from Ahab, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely across Stubb's bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were pretty near to each other, Stubb hailed the mate.†
Chpt 46-48
- For, as it eventually turned out, he cared not to consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain, except he could contribute some of that information he so absorbingly sought.†
Chpt 52-54
- In a few minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still struggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious allies, who at once claimed the honour of securing a man who had been fully ripe for murder.†
Chpt 52-54
- Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.†
Chpt 58-60
- Do you not marvel, then, at Stubb's boast, that he demanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?†
Chpt 70-72 *
- For a few minutes the struggle was intensely critical; for while they still slacked out the tightened line in one direction, and still plied their oars in another, the contending strain threatened to take them under.†
Chpt 73-75
- The ear has no external leaf whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously minute is it.†
Chpt 73-75
- "The ungracious and ungrateful dog!" cried Starbuck; "he mocks and dares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes ago!"†
Chpt 79-81
- and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings—that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapour—this is surely a noteworthy thing.†
Chpt 85-87
- and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the whale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings—that all this should be, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter minutes past one o'clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D. 1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are, after all, really water, or nothing but vapour—this is surely a noteworthy thing.†
Chpt 85-87
- Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a minute.†
Chpt 85-87
- Say he stays eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy breaths; then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his seventy breaths over again, to a minute.†
Chpt 85-87
- In about three minutes' time, Queequeg's harpoon was flung; the stricken fish darted blinding spray in our faces, and then running away with us like light, steered straight for the heart of the herd.†
Chpt 85-87
- Very good, then; good bye now, and I'll call again in a minute.†
Chpt 91-93
- In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.†
Chpt 91-93
- In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless ocean was between Pip and Stubb.†
Chpt 91-93
- After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralise.†
Chpt 94-96
- But, spite of all this, I could see no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed but a minute since I had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle lamp illuminating it.†
Chpt 94-96
- In less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his crew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the stranger.†
Chpt 100-102
- But this awkwardness only lasted a minute, because the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out, "I see, I see!†
Chpt 100-102
- He lay without moving a few minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his little god, Yojo.†
Chpt 109-111
- Often, in mild, pleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on the stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or sailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or seventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small success for their pains.†
Chpt 112-114
- Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle watch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all strangers: then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before.†
Chpt 127-129
- Because in such a wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations aloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them at the deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few minutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural fatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor should by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all swooping to the sea.†
Chpt 130-132
- Now, the first time Ahab was perched aloft; ere he had been there ten minutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly incommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these latitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his head in a maze of untrackably swift circlings.†
Chpt 130-132
- "Why sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?" cried Ahab, when, after the lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard.†
Chpt 133-135
Definitions:
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(1)
(minute as in: minute size) small, exceptionally small, or insignificant
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(2)
(minute as in: minute description) detailed (including even small considerations); and/or careful (done with care)
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(3)
(minutes as in: keep the minutes) a written record of what happened at a meeting
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(4)
(meaning too common or rare to warrant focus) meaning too common or too 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.