Word.ws English Dictionary

minutia

Syllables: mi·nu·ti·a/maɪ̯ˈn(j)uːʃ(iː)ə/

minutia noun: a minor detail, often of negligible importance.

Noun

minutia (plural minutiae or (obsolete) minutiæ)

  1. A minor detail, often of negligible importance.
    • They spent all their time on minutiae, never making real progress.
    • I think I can ſee the preciſe and diſtinguiſhing marks of national characters more in theſe nonſenſical minutiæ, than in the moſt important matters of ſtate ; where great men of all nations talk and ſtalk ſo much alike, that I would not give ninepence to chuſe amongſt them.1768, Mr. Yorick [pseudonym; Laurence Sterne], A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, 2nd edition, volume I, London: T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, published 1768, page 159
  2. (forensics) Any of the point features on fingerprints used for matching, usually endings and bifurcations of ridges.

Examples of minutia in a sentence

  • Ah, a discussion of definitional minutia: just my cup of tea!
  • This can be tedious, especially the minutiae of French laws and policies in Canada.
  • There are details and details and details that have been used against me that are minutiae.

All 11 example sentences with minutia

Forms of minutia

pluralminutiae
plural (obsolete)minutiæ

Plural of minutia: minutiae

Origin of minutia

Borrowed from Latin minutia, from minūtus (“small, little”), from minuō (“make smaller”). By surface analysis, minute + -ia.

Words formed from minutia

Questions about minutia

What does minutia mean?
Minutia means a minor detail, often of negligible importance.
What part of speech is minutia?
Minutia is a noun.
How do you pronounce minutia?
Minutia is pronounced /maɪ̯ˈn(j)uːʃ(iː)ə/.
What is the plural of minutia?
The plural of minutia is minutiae.

Words near minutia in the dictionary

  1. minutes of arc
  2. minutesful
  3. minuteslong
  4. minutest
  5. minutesworth
  6. minutia
  7. minutiae
  8. minutial
  9. minuting
  10. minutiose
  11. minutious

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: minutia (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-minutia.wav.

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