minor – English adjective declension

Adjective: minor

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Perifrastic

Comparative	more minor
Superlative	most minor

Sample Sentences

of minor importance
a minor poet
Here we se thre proposicions, or sentences, whereof the first is called Maior, that is to saie, the proposicion at large. the seconde is called Minor, that is to saie, the seuerall proposicion. the thirde is called conclusio. [1551, Thomas Wilson, The Rule of Reason..., published 1970, sig. F8:]
It is my intention to wait a few years before I publish any minor poems. [1819 January 2, John Keats, letter:]
There is now such an immense "microliterature" on hepatics that, beyond a certain point I have given up trying to integrate (and evaluate) every minor paper published—especially narrowly floristic papers. [1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page viii:]
The defendant resides at 123 Fake Street with his partner and two minor children.
She suffered a minor injury.
There was minor bruising.
He has a minor case of puppy love.
We now know on authority of Dr. Briggs that every case of vaccination is "a minor case of smallpox," and that every such case of smallpox "should be carefully watched until all danger is passed". [1899 October, Edward Pollock Anshutz, Homoepathic Envoy, Vol. 10, No. 8, p. 58]
The musical interval between C and E♭ is a minor third while C to E is a major third.
...a certaine Fraction, which may be the difference betwixt a Tone major and a Tone minor, which we nominate a Schism... [1653 [1618], René Descartes, translated by Lord Brouncker, Excellent Compendium of Musick, page 30:]
Beethoven's melancholy Moonlight Sonata is scored in the key of C# minor, using the diatonic scale C♯, D♯, E, F♯, G♯, A, and B, but modulates throughout.
The minor mode of D is tender. [1772, William Jones, “On the Arts, Commonly Called Imitative”, in Poems..., page 209:]
The first chorus: ‘Behold the Lamb of God’, with its dark minor chords, brings threatening clouds over us. [1843 March, United States Magazine & Democratic Review, page 273:]
Modern harmonists are unwilling to acknowledge that the minor triad is less consonant than the major. [1880, Edmund Gurney, The Power of Sound, pages 271–272:]
After harmony was introduced into music during the late Middle Ages, major and minor triads emerged as the principal chords. The major triad, as C E G, was regarded with especial favor, because it occurs naturally in the harmonic series, as on bugles, and can be expressed by the simple ratios, 4:5:6. A system of tuning for the diatonic scale known today as just intonation gained support in the 16th century, because its principal triads, C E G, F A C, and G B D, had these just ratios. But an important minor triad, D F A, is harsh in just intonation, and other unsatisfactory triads result when this tuning is extended to the complete chromatic scale. [1948 November, J.M. Barbour, “Music and Ternary Continued Fractions”, in American Mathematical Monthly, volume 55, number 9, page 545:]
The first voice of the fugue that Elizabeth had played... came to him, inverted mockingly and in a minor key. [1951, Carson McCullers, “The Sojourner”, in O. Henry Prize Stories of 1951, page 200:]
[Tufnel] It's part of a trilogy, really, a musical trilogy that I'm doing in D... minor which I always find is really the saddest of all keys, really. I don't know why but it makes people weep instantly to play it... This piece is called "Lick My Love Pump". [1984, Christopher Guest, et al., This Is Spinal Tap:]
He was a moralist in a minor key, more concerned that people should say ‘tinned peaches’ and not ‘tin peaches’, than that they should worry about nuclear disarmament. [1995 October 23, John Walsh, “The Pragmatic Entertainer Who Said the Unsayable”, in The Independent, page 3:]
The minor requirements only involve about 20 hours of classes.
The minor term of John Stuart Mill's famous syllogism—usually mistakenly credited to Aristotle—is Socrates; the major term is mortal.
He whipt her with a foxes taile, Barnes minor, [c. 1593, Henry Chettle, Kind-harts Dreame, sig. C2]
Espionage... was a field that had sophisticated itself since the distant time when Patullo Minor... had enthralled his school-fellows with his hazardous escapades. [1978, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, Full Term, page 250:]
The minor perfect mode was marked by one single line which crossed three spaces, and the longue was equal to three breves... The minor imperfect mode was marked by a line which crossed two spaces only, and its longue was equal only to two breves. [1779, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by William Waring, Complete Dictionary of Music, page 243:]
Josquin works in minor prolation—that is, works in which the signature indicates that a semibreve is equal to two minims, often have a 3 as a medial signature for a few measures, indicating that until the 3 is canceled by the reappearance of a sign for minor prolation, there are to be 3 minims to a semibreve. [1969, Arthur Mendel, "Some Preliminary Attempts at Computer-Assisted Style Analysis in Music", Computers and the Humanities, Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 45]
...that the Minor part of the Lords might joyn with the Major part of the House of Commons... [1642, Charles I, His Majesties Answer to a Printed Book Entituled A Remonstrance..., page 13:]
In every other, the minor will be preferred by me to the major vote. [1796 December 27, Thomas Jefferson, letter]
And whenever Dre tore her off some money, she always split it up between his kids. She would've felt real minor taking all his cash and spending it on herself, knowing how needy his babies were. [2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 128:]

Adjectives inflected like minor

priest-ridden, unreposed, evadible, dissentious, dissentient, unforesighted, egocentrical, unephemeral, unennobling, mensuralist, flocculent, unseductive, whoopsy, whooshy, surrogate, Nicodian, unrepaired, prismatoidal, renorenal, unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)

Etymology

From Middle English minor, menor, menour, etc., from Latin minor (“lesser; young; young person”) both directly and via Norman and Middle French menor, menour, etc. Doublet of minus but not mini-. Cognate with minister, minify, Minorca, Menshevik, and possibly minnow. Compare Latin minimum and minuō, Old High German minniro, Cornish minow. See: Latin Adjectives 'minor'.