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Chris -- 2018-04-11
This week I saw a word in a published source that really raised my heckles* and got my dandruff up.** One of my pet pees *** is the pernicious substitution of the spelling “miniscule†for “minuscule.â€
(Readers who dislike rants may want to stop reading at this point.)
There is no historical argument to be made for the spelling “miniscule.†The word “minuscule†was adapted from the Latin “minusculus†by scholars of the early Renaissance to contrast lower case (“minusculeâ€) letters with uppercase (“majusculeâ€) letters. “Minuscule†and its cognates became common terms in both English and the Romance languages, and the word’s accent remained in the early days in its proper Latin place, on the second syllable (“min-OOS-coolâ€). Within a century of its adaption from Latin “minuscule†had broadened into a term that could be applied to anything of a smallish size.
In the ensuing centuries the accent on the English word “minuscule†migrated to the first syllable. Today the word is used with both accentuation patterns, though “MIN-uhss-kyul†seems to have gained the upper hand in recent decades. Moving the accent of “minuscule†to the first syllable had repercussions on other parts of the word. In particular, the change in accent transformed the vowel in the second syllable into a schwa.
With only a nondescript schwa protecting the original “us†sound, “minuscule†was unable to hold its ancient spelling under the onslaught of the mighty “minis.†The English word “miniature†had spawned, beginning about the turn of the twentieth century, a brood of bastards words that added the “mini-“ prefix to a plethora of pathetic portmanteaux, from miniskirts to minigolf to mini-mes. Under the impression that there must be some connection between the popular “mini“ words and “minuscule,†people started spelling the word “minuscule†as “miniscule.†The move of the accent to the first syllable, the same accent pattern used by the “minis,â€greased the already speeding switch to the “miniscule†spelling.
Today the spelling “miniscule†is so common that editors do not always flag it. In the edited prose of the COCA and the BNC, for example, the “miniscule†spelling occurs at about 20% of the frequency of “minuscule.†If anything, “miniscule†will become even more common in the future, since many of those who write “minuscule†say “min-ISS-kyul.†Ben Zimmer notes that the use of “miniscule†in the Oxford English Corpus almost equals that of “minuscule†for edited texts and far exceeds it in the unedited texts of the corpus.*****
All this would be a bit pendantic,***** of course, if the ‘mini-“ bunch shared an shared an ancestry with “minuscule.†Curiously, their derivations do not seem to overlap. “Miniature†descends from an Italian word for a “small, brightly coloured image used to decorate books†(OED) and the Italian word seems to have been taken from the church Latin verb “miniare,†which originally referred to tinting with red paint (cf. English “miniateâ€). The issue, however, may not be so cotton dry.****** The OED suggests that the evolution of “miniature†may have been influenced at some point by the Latinate words deriving from “minus†and “minor,†the ancient sources of “minuscule.†All of which makes me wonder just where “mini†exercised its eggcornical influence on the execrable “miniscule.†Was it in the metaphorical expansion of “minuscule†during the Renaissance, during the twentieth century attack of the “minis,†or during both periods?
The “minuscule/miniscule†issue, by the way, had a passing mention on this forum in 2005.*******
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Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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