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Minuscule comes from the Latin adjective minusculus ("somewhat smaller" or "fairly small"), which in turn pairs the base of minus ("smaller") with -culus, a diminutive suffix (that is, one indicating small size). The minuscule spelling is consistent with the word’s etymology, but that didn’t stop English speakers from adopting the variant spelling miniscule, likely because they associated it with the combining form mini- and such words as minimal and minimum. Usage commentators generally consider the miniscule spelling an error, but it is widely used in reputable and carefully edited publications, and is accepted as a legitimate variant in some dictionaries. (Our own dictionary identifies miniscule as a "disputed spelling variant.")
Examples of minuscule in a Sentence
Matt Krupnick, ProPublica, 10 Mar. 2025
The birds are already minuscule and delicate, and many of the ones Masear works with are babies whose mothers have disappeared or died, which puts them in even greater peril.
—Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 6 Mar. 2025
So far, only government space agencies from the United States and Japan have brought minuscule samples from asteroids back to Earth at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
—Jackie Wattles, CNN, 25 Feb. 2025
The academy’s two-pronged goal is to diversify the ranks of archeologists, a minuscule fraction of whom are Black, and to include people from across the diaspora in the study of its history.
—Julian Lucas, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Minuscule.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/minuscule. Accessed 17 Mar. 2025.
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