Adjacent Words

minuscule definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: of or relating to a small cursive script developed from uncial; 7th to 9th centuries [syn: minuscule, minuscular] [ant: majuscule]
2: lowercase; "little a"; "small a"; "e.e.cummings's poetry is written all in minuscule letters" [syn: little, minuscule, small]
3: very small; "a minuscule kitchen"; "a minuscule amount of rain fell" [syn: minuscule, miniscule] n
1: the characters that were once kept in bottom half of a compositor's type case [syn: small letter, lowercase, lower-case letter, minuscule] [ant: capital, capital letter, majuscule, upper-case letter, uppercase]
2: a small cursive script developed from uncial between the 7th and 9th centuries and used in medieval manuscripts

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: French, from Latin minusculus rather small, diminutive of minor smaller Date: 1701 1. a lowercase letter 2. a. one of several ancient and medieval writing styles developed from cursive and having simplified and small forms b. a letter in this style II. adjective Date: 1703 1. written in or in the size or style of minuscules 2. very small <minuscule amounts>

Britannica Concise

Lowercase letters in calligraphy, in contrast to majuscule, or uppercase letters. Unlike majuscules, minuscules are not fully contained between two real or hypothetical lines; their stems can go above or below the line. Developed by Alcuin in the 8th cent., it allowed the division of writing into sentences and paragraphs by beginning sentences with capital letters and ending them with periods. The script was originally rounded, but gradually the strokes became heavier until it became what is now known as Gothic or black letter script.

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. & adj. --n. 1 Palaeog. a kind of cursive script developed in the 7th c. 2 a lower-case letter. --adj. 1 lower-case. 2 colloq. extremely small or unimportant. Derivatives: minuscular adj. Etymology: F f. L minuscula (littera letter) dimin. of minor: see MINOR

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Minuscule Mi*nus"cule, n. [L. minusculus rather small, fr. minus less: cf. F. minuscule.] 1. Any very small, minute object. 2. A small Roman letter which is neither capital nor uncial; a manuscript written in such letters. -- a. Of the size and style of minuscules; written in minuscules. These minuscule letters are cursive forms of the earlier uncials. --I. Taylor (The Alphabet).

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

If you describe something as minuscule, you mean that it is very small. The film was shot in 17 days, a minuscule amount of time. = minute ADJ

Moby Thesaurus

abecedarian, allographic, alphabetic, baby, baby-sized, bantam, banty, capital, compact, diminutive, duodecimo, graphemic, handy, ideographic, lettered, lexigraphic, literal, logogrammatic, logographic, lower-case, majuscule, miniature, miniaturized, minikin, minimal, minuscular, pictographic, pocket, pocket-sized, pony, small-scale, subminiature, toy, transliterated, twelvemo, uncial, upper-case, vest-pocket