minuet

From French menuet, from menu (“small”) + -et (“diminutive”), from Latin minutus (“very small”).

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• Rhymes: -ɛt

minuet (plural minuets)

1. A slow graceful dance consisting of a coupé, a high step, and a balance.
2. (music) A tune or air to regulate the movements of the minuet dance: it has the dance form, and is commonly in 3/4, sometimes 3/8, measure.
3. (music) A complete short musical composition inspired by and conforming to many formal characteristics of the traditional musical accompaniment to the dance of same name.
4. (music) A movement which is part of a longer musical composition such as a suite, sonata, or symphony which is inspired by and conforming to formal characteristics of the dance of same name.

minuet (third-person singular simple present minuets, present participle minueting, simple past and past participle minueted)

1. To dance a minuet.
   • 1838, William Samuel Waithman Ruschenberger, A Voyage Round the World, page 318:

     After he had raved his time upon the stage, the ladies and knights again minueted for an hour, and again gave place.

   • 1840, “An Officer of the U. S. Navy,”, in Around the World: A Narrative of a Voyage in the East India Squadron, Under Commodore George C. Read, page 163:

     Within the same circle with the pigeons, were beautiful albatrosses, poising and minueting with them in the most pleasing fellowship.

   • 2001, Tony Sharp, Pleasure and Ambition: The Life, Loves and Wars of Augustus the Strong, page 185:

     This set the pattern for four years, as the two monarchs minueted around the vast Commonwealth, never again to face each other personally in battle.

• minute, munite, mutein, mutine, untime

minuet

1. third-person singular future active indicative of minuō

minuet m (plural minuets)

1. minuet