minutes

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of minute.

   The presentation ran twenty minutes longer than scheduled.

   Only a few minutes remained before the deadline.

   Note

   One spelling carries several different counts. Minutes of time are sixtieths of an hour, and minutes of angle are sixtieths of a degree. On a phone network, minutes are units you buy, only roughly matched to sixty seconds of use. The informal minute, a short unspecified stretch, pluralizes too: give me a few minutes. Keep all of these apart from the record of a meeting, which exists only in the plural.

2. 2
   nouncountableplural

   The official notes kept to record what is said and decided during a meeting.

   She circulated the minutes to all attendees within an hour of the meeting.

   The committee disputed the wording of the minutes before approving them.

   Similarnotes, record, proceedings

   Note

   This meaning lives only in the plural. A single meeting produces minutes, not a minute, and the verb agrees accordingly: the minutes show, the minutes were approved. Because they are the official account, minutes serve as evidence. A newspaper cites them when a council's decisions become news, and a prosecution looks for them alongside letters and witnesses. They are minutes of or from a meeting.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of minute.

   Whoever chairs the session usually minutes the key decisions as well.

   An assistant minutes the negotiations so nothing is later disputed.

   Note

   Here the record becomes an action: whoever minutes a meeting turns it into the official notes. The verb is transitive and needs an object. The chair minutes the decisions; an assistant minutes the talks. That object is the event or point being recorded, not the document itself. A looser use simply means jotting something down briefly, with no meeting involved.

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