mini

Pluralminis

1. 1
   adjective

   Very small, or made in a much smaller size than the usual kind.

   The caterers passed around mini crab cakes while the guests arrived.

   She carries a mini bottle of hand lotion in her purse when she travels.

   Similarminiature, tiny, small, little

   Oppositelarge, giant, jumbo

   Note

   The prefix of miniskirt and minicomputer has broken free to stand as a word of its own, and it sits before the noun it shrinks: mini crab cakes, a mini bottle. It is not compared: nothing is minier or more mini, and a speaker who wants degrees of size reaches for smaller or tiny.

2. 2
   nounabbreviation

   Abbreviation of miniskirt.

   She paired a denim mini with a loose sweater and ankle boots.

   Fashion editors declared the mini back in style for the spring collections.

   Note

   A clipping of miniskirt that keeps the full word's grammar: it is countable, with the plural minis. Donna Freitas's The Possibilities of Sainthood (2010) shows how a skirt becomes one, rolled up until it is "a virtual mini." The same clipping also names the mid-size computer and the gaming figure, and only the surrounding talk tells them apart.

3. 3
   nounabbreviation

   Abbreviation of miniature, a small figure of a character used in board games and role-playing games.

   The box comes with forty unpainted minis, and each player picks one mini as a hero.

   Move your mini three squares toward the door, then roll to attack the goblin.

   Note

   The clipping draws on one meaning of miniature, a model at reduced scale, rather than the detailed portrait, the manuscript illustration or the short musical piece the full word can also name. Among board and role-playing gamers, painting minis accurately is a way to add realism to a game.

4. 4
   nouncolloquialcountable

   In dance, a very young dancer, such as a small child in a dance class.

   The studio's minis opened the recital with a tap routine to a nursery rhyme.

   Every mini in the class got a sticker after the dress rehearsal.

   Note

   This is studio talk: informal, and at home in the dance world rather than in general writing. Readers who do not dance may not know it, so text meant for a wider audience is clearer with young dancer.

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