Minutes

How to spell minutes

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce minutes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does minutes mean?

1. nounPeriods of time each equal to sixty seconds, or a short stretch of time generally.
2. nounThe official written record of what was discussed and decided at a meeting.

Minutes in a sentence

• The train leaves in ten minutes, so we should hurry.

• The secretary circulated the minutes from last week's board session.

• She microwaved the meal for three minutes before serving it.

• Please correct the minutes to reflect that I voted against the proposal.

Where does minutes come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin minutus, meaning 'made small' or 'lessened', the past participle of minuere, 'to diminish'. In medieval Latin the phrase pars minuta prima, 'the first small part', described the sixtieth division of an hour, and pars minuta secunda, 'the second small part', gave us the 'second'; English shortened the first of these to 'minute' in the 1300s. The same root produced the adjective 'minute' meaning very tiny, which is why the two words look identical on the page despite sounding different. The meeting sense arose in the 1700s from the idea of writing something down in 'minute' (small, rough) notes, a brief memorandum jotted at the time. Because the singular already ends in a silent -e, the plural simply adds -s, and the unstressed second syllable (the schwa in 'min-UH-t') is the spot where careless writers sometimes stumble.

How the word is built

• minut- (from Latin minutus: made small)
• -e
• -s (plural)