mincing

mincing is the present participle and gerund of mince.

Noun

mincing (countable and uncountable, plural mincings)

The act by which something is minced.
- After three or four mincings with a coarse blade the product was passed two or three times through a fine blade.1931, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, volume 90, page 689
Affected dainty speech or movement.
- My father, León Fuertes, was a fag three years; a roaring faggot; a lisping, smirking fruit; […] He put on all the trappings of inversion: the twittered mouthings, the hyper-feminine moues, the languid mincings.1975, R. M. Koster, The Dissertation, page 118

mince (third-person singular simple present minces, present participle mincing, simple past and past participle minced)

(transitive) To make less; to make small.
(transitive) To lessen; to diminish; to diminish in speaking; to speak of lightly or slightingly; to minimise.

Synonyms:

abase, abate, belittle, besmall, bring down, embase, cut, decrease, decrement, diminish
(rare, transitive) To effect mincingly.
(transitive) To cut into very small pieces; to chop finely.
- Butchers often use machines to mince meat.
(archaic, figuratively, transitive) To suppress or weaken the force of.
- Siren, now mince the sin, / And mollify damnation with a phrase.1681, John Dryden, The Spanish Fryar: Or, the Double Discovery. […], London: […] Richard Tonson and Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page number)
Synonyms:

extenuate, palliate, weaken
To say or utter vaguely (not directly or frankly).
- to mince one's words

mincing (comparative more mincing, superlative most mincing)

Affectedly dainty.
- "Is there nothing to eat in the house?" he asked, insolently, as if to a servant. In certain stages of his intoxication he affected the clipped, mincing speech of the towns. Mrs. Morel hated him most in this condition.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 2”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC

What does mincing mean?: Mincing means affectedly dainty.
What is mincing the present participle and gerund of?: Mincing is the present participle and gerund of mince.
What part of speech is mincing?: Mincing can be an adjective or a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: mincing (page history and authors); mince (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “mincing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mincing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.