minu

The root minu comes from a tight family of Latin words built on the idea of smallness. The adjective minor meant 'smaller, lesser,' and minus simply meant 'less.' From these came the verb minuere, 'to make smaller, to lessen,' whose past participle minūtus meant 'made small, tiny, finely divided.' Every English word in this family is an answer to the question 'how small, or how much less?'

The most direct members keep the bare comparison. minor is 'lesser' — a minor problem, a minor key, or a minor (someone not yet of full legal size/age). minority is the smaller group; minus is the sign of subtraction or a disadvantage. Push minor to its extreme and you get the superlative family: minimum (the smallest amount), minimal, minimize (make as small as possible), minimalist.

The verb minuere gives the 'reduce' words. diminish (via Old French, with a di- intensifier) means 'to make less'; its relatives are diminution and the adjective diminishing. The musical diminuendo — 'getting gradually softer' — is the same idea applied to volume.

Now the surprising branch: minūtus, 'made tiny, finely cut.' A minute thing is microscopically small (mai-NEWT) — and the same word, respelled, became the minute of time. Why? Medieval scholars split an hour into sixty small parts, the pars minūta prīma ('first small part') — that is your minute; the 'second small part' (pars minūta secunda) gave us the second. So the clock face is literally built from the word for 'tiny.' Trivia about tiny details are minutiae; an extremely small thing is minuscule; a tiny dance was a minuet; a small portrait is a miniature, and mini- now means small in countless modern coinages.

The most counter-intuitive member is minister. A minister was originally a minus — a 'lesser one,' a servant or attendant (contrast with magister, the 'greater one,' the master). The one who served by carrying out duties became the one who manages them: a government minister, a ministry, and through administer (ad- 'to' + minister, 'to serve toward / manage for') the whole administration / administrator family. The humble servant climbed to the cabinet, but the root memory is still 'the lesser one who attends.' And menu? French menu came from minūtus too: a 'small, detailed list' of dishes.

A warning about look-alikes: this minu (small/less) is unrelated to min in mine/mineral (digging) and to ēminēre / prōminēre (to jut out — eminent, prominent). Same letters, different stories.