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minute
in a sentence
grouped by contextual meaning

minute as in:  minute size

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • Even a minute amount of lead can be harmful to children.
  • On the left he drew his pictures, with a pencil sharpened to a needle-like point: moth wings with their branching patterns of veins; spider legs, which had minute hairs and tiny feet like claws; beetles, with their feelers and their glossy armor.   (source)
    minute = very small
  • Her earrings were minute bunches of grapes, pearl also but with gold stems and leaves.   (source)
  • When it decided it was time, it deployed its wings, rose in the air with a minute clattering, hovered above the lifeboat momentarily, as if making sure no one had been left behind, and then veered overboard to its death.   (source)
    minute = small
  • They chatted as they hoisted their babies and expertly dodged, with minute shifts of their hips, the children tearing after each other around the house.   (source)
  • The minute owl was still hooting excitedly.   (source)
    minute = very small
  • A slender wooden jetty arcs out from a beach called the Plage du Mole; a delicate, reticulated atrium vaults over the seafood market; minute benches, the smallest no larger than apple seeds, dot the tiny public squares.   (source)
  • It was the kind of box wedding rings came in, purple velvet with a minute catch.   (source)
    minute = tiny
  • The forest minutely vibrated.   (source)
    minutely = very slightly
  • She still thought in her father's lunchbox there might be minute cows and sheep that found time to graze on the bourbon and baloney.   (source)
    minute = very small
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show 89 more with this conextual meaning
  • He could make intricate toys—tiny windmills, rattles, minute jewel boxes out of dried palm reeds; he could carve perfect boats out of tapioca stems and figurines on cashew nuts.   (source)
    minute = small
  • As she speaks Hana gives me a little wink and a minute shake of her head.   (source)
    minute = very small
  • I keep staring, trying to remember every minute detail of this moment, the way she grips the wooden spoon in her hand, the ivory look to her skin with the light coming in the windows behind her, the tenderness in her eyes.   (source)
    minute = small
  • He was a historian and philosopher; any contribution he might make to the expedition's success would be minute, at best.   (source)
  • When I hit the third it was ever so slightly off and I gave one of the tuning pegs a minute adjustment without thinking.   (source)
  • I reached forward, without thinking, to touch his folded hands, but he slid them away minutely, and I pulled my hand back.   (source)
    minutely = slightly
  • Washerwomen lived in the lane and sweeps and a cobbler, and a man whose house-front was studded all over with minute bird-cages.   (source)
    minute = small
  • As she spoke Lieutenant Awn was asking me questions, with minute twitches of her fingers.   (source)
  • He made it clear that this anxiety was due to Ulrich, specifically, Ulrich's "constitutional propensity" to lose sight of the broad scheme and throw himself into minute tasks better handled by subordinates, a trait that Olmsted feared had left Ulrich vulnerable to demands by other officials, in particular Burnham.   (source)
    minute = minor
  • There was the minute sound of breaking ice shards.   (source)
    minute = small
  • You can dial in your five-hundred-yard dope and still hit a target from one hundred to seven hundred yards without worrying too much about making minute adjustments.   (source)
  • Anaxagoras held that nature is built up of an infinite number of minute particles invisible to the eye.   (source)
    minute = tiny
  • She got herself some basic science textbooks, a good dictionary, and a journal she'd use to copy passage after passage from biology textbooks: "Cell is a minute portion of living substance," she wrote.   (source)
    minute = very small
  • The minute waves of hydraulic pressure were beating against the clapper in the valve.   (source)
    minute = small
  • The Librarian shakes his head minutely.   (source)
    minutely = slightly
  • He recounted everything that he could recall, down to the minutest and most inconsequential observation, proud of the information that he had gathered.   (source)
    minutest = smallest
  • As soon as they carried off Mauricio Babilonia with his shattered spinal column, Fernanda had worked out the most minute details of a plan destined to wipe out all traces of the burden.   (source)
    minute = small
  • Mr. Bykovski put his cup down carefully in the saucer, the sound a minute clinking noise in an otherwise silent room.   (source)
  • A fisherman wrote of tides and catches in almost minute detail; the second, by a chatty schoolteacher named Glenara, described her budding relationship with a young visiting doctor over an eight-month period, as well as her thoughts about her students and people she knew in town.   (source)
    minute = insignificant
  • Then her right eyelid flutters minutely.   (source)
    minutely = slightly
  • The smell of a strawberry arises from the interaction of at least 350 different chemicals that are present in minute amounts.   (source)
    minute = very small
  • But the glass splinters found some minute, untouched place—as they always did—and tore the heart and let the whistling in.   (source)
    minute = small
  • I'd asked her recently after one of Gervais's visits, which I had spent alternately struggling with the power rule and sitting by, open-mouthed, as they riffed on the minute details of a recent sci-fi blockbuster, down to the extra scenes after the credits.   (source)
  • We always responded to the slightest change in weather, the most minute shifts in time of day.   (source)
    minute = minor
  • When, after she had them in use on the spinning jennies upstairs for a week, she came down bringing them for certain minute alterations, his attitude was one of friendly helpfulness.   (source)
    minute = small
  • The device inside the child's body is calibrated to detect minute fluctuations in carbon dioxide, the chief component of human breath.   (source)
  • Raphael, noticing her gesture, smiled minutely.   (source)
    minutely = slightly
  • Hrothgar speaks: I have dreamt it again: standing suddenly still In a thicket, among wet trees, stunned, minutely Shuddering, hearing a wooden echo escape.   (source)
  • It was all about lost information, how to recover the minutest unit of data and identify it as a truck driven by a man smoking a French cigarette, going down the Ho Chi Minh trail.   (source)
    minutest = smallest
  • As he sat inertly at the rickety bridge table that served as a desk, his lips were closed, his eyes were blank, and his face, with its pale ochre hue and ancient, confined clusters of minute acne pits, had the color and texture of an uncracked almond shell.   (source)
    minute = small
  • After a bit, Aunt Thelma had me close my eyes and describe the picture of the tiny garden in the minutest detail.   (source)
    minutest = smallest
  • "Umm," was her agreement as she took a minute bite of the point of her narrow triangle of pizza.   (source)
    minute = small
  • From a small glass box, he removed what appeared to be a minute replica of a dragon-prowed Viking ship whose tiny oars and striped sail were rendered in exquisite detail.   (source)
  • Her background was charted, scrutinized, and published down to the most minute detail, from her outbursts in elementary school to her being committed to St. Stefan's Psychiatric Clinic for Children, outside Uppsala, where she spent more than two years.   (source)
    minute = minor
  • Hazel could sense that there were many all about, taking flies and moths on the wing and uttering their minute cries as they flew.   (source)
    minute = small
  • His skin tingled with each minute droplet of mist that touched him.   (source)
  • Your upper left cheekbone-your cheekbones are also pronounced, conceivably Slavic generations ago-has minute traces of a surgical scar.   (source)
    minute = very small
  • It occurred to Leavitt that this was exactly what they were looking at: a minute, complete planet, with its life forms intact.   (source)
    minute = small
  • His eyes sharpened behind his tinted glasses as the treated lenses picked up a minute spot of talc on a cuff.   (source)
    minute = very small
  • There's a minute scar on her cheek.   (source)
    minute = small
  • Had things been minutely different sometime earlier, the Giulianis might now be together on the beach.   (source)
    minutely = slightly
  • But Legolas stood beside him, shading his bright elven-eyes with his long slender hand, and he saw not a shadow, nor a blur, but the small figures of horsemen, many horsemen, and the glint of morning on the tips of their spears was like the twinkle of minute stars beyond the edge of mortal sight.   (source)
    minute = tiny
  • Mary said afterwards that he hummed and ha'd for an unconscionable time while he examined the baby in minutest detail.   (source)
    minutest = smallest
  • There were minute amounts of ethanol in both Blane and Santorelli, but that was just the consequence of putrefaction.   (source)
    minute = small
  • He chose a minute aspect of the answer and asked who had dealt with it in an altogether different way, and Danny answered.   (source)
    minute = minor
  • What images of family life they consumed in their minute jaws and took into their bodies no thicker than the pages they ate.   (source)
    minute = tiny
  • It was a tailored tie-silk dressing gown, beige, with a pretty pattern of minute pink tea roses.   (source)
    minute = small
  • In other words, a finite thing can be divided an infinite number of times, down to even the minutest atom.   (source)
    minutest = smallest
  • She remembered, in the fevered condition of her mind, how, as a child, she had been horrified to learn that with every step she made, thousands of minute creatures were destroyed beneath her foot; and now, whether she had lied or told the truth—or even, she was sure, had kept silent—she had been forced to destroy a human being; perhaps two, for was there not also the Jew, Fiedler, who had been gentle with her, taken her arm and told her to go back to England?   (source)
    minute = tiny
  • Eating these small mammals presented something of a problem at first because of the numerous minute bones; however, I found that the bones could be chewed and swallowed without much difficulty.   (source)
    minute = small
  • That nasty little excrescence, attached like a ridge of minute bruised toothbites to her forearm, was the single detail of her appearance which—on the night when I first saw her at the Pink Palace—instantly conveyed to my mind the mistaken idea that she was a Jew.   (source)
  • And I understood that London wasn't simply a place that was there, as people say of mountains, but that it had been made by men, that men had given attention to details as minute as those camels.   (source)
  • Every fifteen or twenty seconds he made minute alterations in course in response to directions from Saratoga, which was holding both planes on its screens.   (source)
  • Every now and then, as though he perceived some minute thing, a sudden alert, tantalized look would creep over the little man's face, and he would gaze slowly around him, quite slyly.   (source)
  • Pin points of sunlight came in through minute holes in the shades and about the edges.   (source)
    minute = very small
  • Every minute detail of their evidence was worked out beforehand.   (source)
    minute = small
  • Made of mud and twigs, it had been set up in a minute clearing by a small farmer whom the forest must have driven out, edging in on him, an unstayable natural force which he couldn't defeat with his machete and his small fires.   (source)
  • Old Granum was the deathbed watcher and Psalm reciter, feeble and ruination-faced, in Chinatown black alpaca and minute, slippered feet.   (source)
  • But maybe I was wrong in that surmise, and maybe I could not have hurried the massive deliberation of that current in which we were caught and suspended, or hurried Anne Stanton's pensive and scholarly assimilation of each minute variation which had to be slowly absorbed into the body of our experience before another could be permitted.   (source)
  • Just as the personal qualities of extraordinary people can make themselves plain in an unaccustomed change of expression, so the intensely calculated perfection of Villa Diana transpired all at once through such minute failures as the chance apparition of a maid in the background or the perversity of a cork.   (source)
  • A patch of her throat had a minute roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser.   (source)
  • But let me dip again and bring up in my spoon another of these minute objects which we call optimistically, "characters of our friends"—Louis.   (source)
  • Yet on the day when I went out there to stay that summer, it was as though that casual pause at my door had left some seed, some minute virulence in this cellar earth of mine quick not for love perhaps...   (source)
  • They will not say to somebody else, "Do this, that and the other or you will go to prison", but they will, if they can, get inside his brain and dictate his thoughts for him in the minutest particulars.   (source)
    minutest = smallest
  • There was something about the luxury of the Welland house and the density of the Welland atmosphere, so charged with minute observances and exactions, that always stole into his system like a narcotic.   (source)
    minute = small
  • The stable lineaments of the mask of the world had overlapped, shifted configuration as secretly and minutely as clock-hands, as sudden as the wink of an eye.   (source)
    minutely = slightly
  • He had drunk a few times before—minute quantities that his sister had given him at Woodson Street.   (source)
    minute = small
  • There were twelve in all, in two different formats, twelve records to each; and since many of the circular disks were minutely etched on both sides—not simply because many pieces required two sides, but also because a good number of them offered two different selections—it was difficult at first to get an overview of this confusing world of beautiful possibilities waiting to be conquered.   (source)
    minutely = in a small way
  • At the point of land favored by Roberta, into a minute protected bay with a small, curved, honey-colored beach, and safe from all prying eyes north or east.   (source)
    minute = small
  • A shrill and minute singing stole upon his hearing.  Once, and twice, he sleepily brushed his nose with his paw. Then he woke up.  There, buzzing in the air at the tip of his nose, was a lone mosquito.   (source)
  • He nursed his little aristocracy and its minute distinctions and any insult paid to a Marquesa was an insult to His Person.   (source)
  • That picture is from when he was young, but he can never have looked anything like it, as he's tiny, minute almost.   (source)
    minute = exceedingly small
  • I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me.   (source)
    minute = small
  • It was as though her woman's hand was assisting him to make some minute readjustment of the machinery of his life.   (source)
  • I myself might be the minute personage whom, in an enlarged photograph of St. Mark's that had been lent to me, the operator had portrayed, in a bowler hat, in front of the portico   (source)
    minute = very small
  • So when she got back to Branshaw she started, after less than a month, to worry him about the minutest items of his expenditure.   (source)
    minutest = smallest
  • At a little distance stood Minnie and the "garden-child," a minute importation, each holding either end of a long piece of bass.   (source)
    minute = small
  • THE BORE (stammering): No, small, quite small—minute!   (source)
    minute = very small
  • Minute diamonds of moisture from the mist hung, too, upon Tess's eyelashes, and drops upon her hair, like seed pearls.   (source)
    minute = small
  • A thousand of these sheets have been made, all exactly like this, in every minute detail—they can't be told apart.   (source)
  • She made it appear that she was asking Peter Ivanovich's advice about her pension, but he soon saw that she already knew about that to the minutest detail, more even than he did himself.   (source)
    minutest = smallest
  • The captain, as a military man, undertook to load it, putting in a minute quantity of powder.   (source)
    minute = small
  • The reader will understand readily that this was the heart of the ship, the home of all aboard—eating-room, sleeping-chamber, field of exercise, lounging-place off duty—uses made possible by the laws which reduced life there to minute details and a routine relentless as death.   (source)
  • Whenever Pearl saw anything to excite her ever active and wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon that man or thing as her own property, so far as she desired it, but without yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital.   (source)
    minutest = slightest
  • Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.   (source)
    minute = small
  • In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed.   (source)
  • We are going to learn the most minute details; we are going to lay our finger on the debaucheries of our sly friend!   (source)
  • She has travelled over the whole American continent and can at least find her way about this minute island.   (source)
  • Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves.   (source)
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minute as in:  minute description

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  • She thrives at sifting through that kind of minute detail.
    minute = including even small considerations
  • They shared their histories, from first memories onward, recounted in minute detail.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • He lifted the wand and examined it minutely, turning it over and over before his eyes.   (source)
    minutely = carefully (with attention to detail)
  • Each had knotted, carefully combed tassels, fleur-de-lis borders, ornate medallion designs, and minute scalloping amid a motif of connected eight-spoked wheels, all in rust and fire orange.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • It was amazing how minutely I knew Rose, possibly as a result of nursing her after her surgery.   (source)
    minutely = in a detailed manner
  • [T]his case ... requires no minute sifting of complicated facts,   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • Though each face showed no awareness of the other, they were in fact minutely sensitive to each other.   (source)
    minutely = in detail
  • This one section I would examine with the greatest minuteness:   (source)
    minuteness = attention to detail
  • Our watches synchronized, our clothes black, our backpacks on, our breath visible in the cold, our minds filled with the minute details of the plan, our hearts racing, we walked out of the barn together once it was completely dark, around seven.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • They were wrecked-looking and wet to the touch but when I switched on the desk lamp and examined them minutely—specs on, with my Hobie-trained eye, nose inches from the cloth—no blood to be seen.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
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show 87 more with this conextual meaning
  • Close up, each sketch was a mass of minute detail, much like the creatures I'd seen years before.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • We spent the rest of the walk dissecting sentence structures and most of Spanish on a minute description of Mike's facial expressions.   (source)
  • "Of course she likes you," Jonathan tells Gogol, patiently listening to a minute account of their acquaintance one night in the dining hall.   (source)
  • But it's very difficult to work in machine language because you go crazy after a while, working at such a minute level.   (source)
  • Clara described this scene in her notebooks that bore witness to life in minute detail: the two dark rooms, their walls stained with damp, the small dirty bathroom without running water, the kitchen in which there were only a few dry crusts of bread and a jar with a little tea in it.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • The figures and objects stood in relief from the surface, giving the panorama a feeling of hyperrealism with its saturated, glowing colors and minute detail.   (source)
  • ...but she would not allow herself to become upset by the confusion and went on perfecting the details so minutely that she came to be more than a specialist and was a virtuoso in the rites of death.   (source)
    minutely = carefully (with attention to detail)
  • But to believe that dissecting the tragic events of 1996 in minute detail will actually reduce the future death rate in any meaningful way is wishful thinking.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • I told him everything, start to finish, in minute detail.   (source)
  • She spent long Sunday afternoons lying on her stomach, minutely examining every necklace of dots,   (source)
    minutely = carefully (with attention to detail)
  • The murders of Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson were not a national trauma on the scale of the murder of Olof Palme, and the investigation would not be minutely followed by a grieving nation.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • Every question is discussed with moderation, and an acuteness and minuteness equal to that of Queen Elizabeth's privy council.   (source)
    minuteness = attention to detail
  • I went into minute detail and, this time, did as Gail had told me to; I took each question slowly.   (source)
    minute = careful explanation of
  • They are gracefully wrought, each one worked with the same intricate, almost obsessive detail, from hilt to crossbar to minutely etched blade.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • They would examine the capsule minutely and culture everything onto growth media.   (source)
  • Besides flying two, sometimes three times a week, at any hour of the day or night, my crew and I would have to spend the day before planning the most minute segments—from preflighting the aircraft before takeoff to engine shutdown after landing.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • In the investigations that followed, it was learned that Mulligan had planned the closing in advance and in minute detail; his employees were merely carrying out his instructions.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • The human brain is the most complex structure in all the world's biology, a humming and whirring center of thought, speech, motor movement, memory, and thousands of other minute functions.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • I had almost forgotten, not only about the Order, but about Ottawa itself; but as I again leafed through the minutely detailed sheaf of instructions I realized I had been guilty of a dereliction of duty.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • Mrs. Shortley observed it minutely for half a second.   (source)
  • He stared away as if he saw it minutely, as if he could see a lady in white take a flowered cover off the organ, which was set on a little slant in the shade, dust the keys, and start to pump and play.   (source)
    minutely = in a detailed manner
  • The scientist of today is either a mixture of psychologist and inquisitor, studying with real ordinary minuteness the meaning of facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice, and testing the truth-producing effects of drugs, shock therapy, hypnosis, and physical torture; or he is chemist, physicist, or biologist concerned only with such branches of his special subject as are relevant to the taking of life.   (source)
    minuteness = attention to detail
  • They had been hidden in his room in the cellar and he had examined them minutely.   (source)
    minutely = with careful attention to detail
  • I met him in his apartment, listened to him intently, observed him minutely, for I knew that I was facing one of the leaders of World Communism.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • So far, it ran to minute descriptions of the lush furnishings of Sherry's house, rhapsodies over Sherry's exquisite clothes, and course-by-course accounts of fabulous meals consumed by the heroine.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • After showing their passes to a guard, who inspected them minutely, they crossed some open ground littered with casks, and headed toward the pier.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • He then went to the hotel at which Cust had put up and extracted a minute description of that gentleman's departure.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • Vernon holds the board steady while Cash, bevels the edge of it with the tedious and minute care of a jeweler.   (source)
    minute = done with great care
  • And so we proceeded to minutely examine them.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • Vanessa, under the eye of Val Prinsep, or Mr Ouless, R.A. or occasionally of the great Sargent himself, made those minute pencil drawings of Greek statues which she brought home and fixed with a spray of odd smelling mixture; or painted a histrionic male model rather like Sir Henry Irving in oils.   (source)
    minute = carefully detailed
  • His first serving-boys were released to marry, and others succeeded them, who were even more minutely trained.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • They engaged him in long debates: as he ate his lunch, he waved a hot biscuit around, persuasive, sweetly reasonable, exhaustively minute in an effort to prove the connection of Greek and groceries.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • The dispersal of the rest was rather minutely itemized: the taxes and improvements on the Lake Geneva estate had come to almost nine thousand dollars; the general up-keep, including Beatrice's electric and a French car, bought that year, was over thirty-five thousand dollars.   (source)
    minutely = in a detailed manner
  • Carol understood that Vida believed herself to have recited minutely and brazenly a story of intimate love;   (source)
  • He wished there were someone to whom he could boast a little, and he would willingly have discussed minute points of his conduct.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • Such a student will come back with a minute report of the way in which the family that he has seen lives, what their earnings are, what they do well and what they do ill; and he will explain how they might live better.   (source)
  • It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on fire—a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame, swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red reflection upon the cloud-scud above.   (source)
  • The same mail which brought to Edna his letter of disapproval carried instructions—the most minute instructions—to a well-known architect concerning the remodeling of his home, changes which he had long contemplated, and which he desired carried forward during his temporary absence.   (source)
  • One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression.   (source)
    minutely = with careful attention to detail
  • He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead, or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • She was bored when too minute an account was given of the Fussell family, of the anxieties of Charles concerning Naples, of the movements of Mr. Wilcox and Evie, who were motoring in Yorkshire.   (source)
  • She looked about the drawing-room with an expression of minute scrutiny.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • After each visit to Schneider's establishment, Evgenie Pavlovitch writes another letter, besides that to Colia, giving the most minute particulars concerning the invalid's condition.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • He threw himself down upon his face with his lens in his hand and crawled swiftly backward and forward, examining minutely the cracks between the boards.   (source)
    minutely = with careful attention to detail
  • He saw it all, he could talk about it with scorn and bitterness; he had a minute knowledge of it by means of some sixth sense, I conclude, because he swore to me he had remained apart without a glance at them and at the boat—without one single glance.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • Again the jury made minute examinations, and again reported: "We find them to be exactly identical, your honor."   (source)
    minute = careful and detailed
  • My uncle examined all his pockets and his travelling bag with the minutest care.   (source)
    minutest = most careful
  • He told her which of his fellow physicians to send for, and gave her a multitude of minute directions; it was quite on the optimistic hypothesis that she nursed him.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • Dolly simply wondered at all she had not seen before, and, anxious to understand it all, made minute inquiries about everything, which gave Vronsky great satisfaction.   (source)
  • Since that wretched epoch, he had watched with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts—for those it was easy to arrange—but each breath of emotion, and his every thought.   (source)
    minuteness = attention to detail
  • Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did food pass my lips.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • He had taken the precaution of bringing opium in his pocket, and he gave minute directions to Bulstrode as to the doses, and the point at which they should cease.   (source)
  • My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if he were minutely choosing his bone.   (source)
    minutely = carefully (with attention to detail)
  • Now, in order to convey an idea of what passed at that table, we cannot do better than to transcribe here a passage from one of Mademoiselle Baptistine's letters to Madame Boischevron, wherein the conversation between the convict and the Bishop is described with ingenious minuteness.   (source)
    minuteness = detail
  • I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species, or—in this place at least—to much of any description.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • Jack had to answer a host of questions concerning their capture, and to give a minute account of the affray with the buffaloes.   (source)
  • He and Joseph were conversing about some farming business; he gave clear, minute directions concerning the matter discussed, but he spoke rapidly, and turned his head continually aside, and had the same excited expression, even more exaggerated.   (source)
  • My reasons for pursuing this course may be understood from the following: First, were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not only possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be involved in the most embarrassing difficulties.   (source)
  • You may easily imagine with what eagerness I welcomed him, and how minutely I related the whole of what I had seen and heard.   (source)
    minutely = carefully (with attention to detail)
  • Madame de Thoux was very minute in her inquiries as to Kentucky, where she said she had resided in a former period of her life.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • She described with the most vivid minuteness the agonies of the country families whom he had ruined—the sons whom he had plunged into dishonour and poverty—the daughters whom he had inveigled into perdition.   (source)
    minuteness = attention to detail
  • Getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, I looked over the head-board minutely at the second casement.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • You minutely described in these papers every step you took in the progress of your work; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences.   (source)
    minutely = with careful detail
  • Of this he examined the whole minutely, his commendation escaping him more than once in audible comments.   (source)
    minutely = carefully (with attention to detail)
  • When Lydia went away she promised to write very often and very minutely to her mother and Kitty; but her letters were always long expected, and always very short.   (source)
    minutely = with careful attention to detail
  • Throughout the work there is a striking air of truth and the greatest simplicity of style: it is full of minute details.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • These, as well as all the more minute points of light and shadow, are attributes proper to scenery in general, natural to each situation, and subject to the artist's disposal, as his taste or pleasure may dictate.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • For the incidents of the voyage, I refer you to my journal, where you will find them all minutely related.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • Having thus explained a few of the reasons why I have written in verse, and why I have chosen subjects from common life, and endeavoured to bring my language near to the real language of men, if I have been too minute in pleading my own cause, I have at the same time been treating a subject of general interest; and it is for this reason that I request the Reader's permission to add a few words with reference solely to these particular poems, and to some defects which will probably be…   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • Poirot examined them minutely, making a few comments to us as he did so.   (source)
    minutely = with careful attention to detail
  • Seizing my opportunity, I too knelt down, and taking the handkerchief from the sleeve, scrutinized it minutely.   (source)
  • After he had made a minute examination of the floor, the guide began cautiously to move this pile of wood, taking the sticks up one by one, and putting them in another spot.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • We find in them a minute description of the two bronze lions adorning the Municipal Office, and appropriate comments on the lack of trees, the hideousness of the houses, and the absurd lay-out of the town.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • He has no need to go into them minutely-his experience obviates that-the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong.   (source)
    minutely = with careful attention to detail
  • Hotels, people who kept lodgings, boarding-houses-all those within a wide radius of the crimes were questioned minutely.   (source)
  • I made a further minute search, noted that it was now a quarter past four and that therefore it would soon be growing light, and then went back to the kitchen regions.   (source)
    minute = careful
  • I don't know that a very minute study of their progress towards complete disunion is necessary.   (source)
    minute = with careful attention to detail
  • He told him minutely all his symptoms and repeated what the doctor had said of him.   (source)
    minutely = in a detailed manner
  • The whole garden has already been minutely examined.   (source)
    minutely = with careful attention to detail
  • Two or three examined it minutely when Jacobs let it go.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care.   (source)
    minutest = most careful
  • Then I minutely examined my clothes and thought that everything looked old, worn and threadbare.   (source)
    minutely = carefully
  • I tried to calm Ernest; I enquired more minutely concerning my father, and her I named my cousin.   (source)
    minutely = in detail
  • It is mine, at present; and, therefore, continue minutely.   (source)
    minutely = with careful attention to detail
  • That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild.   (source)
    minute = detailed
  • But why shall I minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that night?   (source)
    minutely = in a detailed manner
  • She will give you all the minute particulars, which only woman's language can make interesting.   (source)
    minute = detailed
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minutes as in:  keep the minutes

show 10 more with this conextual meaning
  • I always review the minutes to make sure there are no errors.
    minutes = written record of what happened at a meeting
  • The minutes of that meeting have disappeared from the files—mysteriously—but you can ask Walter Hartridge about it.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (of a meeting)
  • In your satchel when I was hunting for the minutes?   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • Uncle George puts on his bifocals and starts the meeting by reading the minutes: "Our capital account is $24,825, or about $6,206 a couple, $3,103 per person."   (source)
  • The more time they spent reading the minutes of past massacres, the less time they'd have for killing us in a future one.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (of a meeting)
  • I'll take the minutes for you.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • In the words of the minutes of the meeting: "It was submitted to the consideration of the council whether, under all circumstances, it would not be eligible to leave Long Island and its dependencies [fortifications] and remove the army to New York."   (source)
  • Do you remember—looking at page sixteen of the grand jury minutes, line ten—'You picked him out of the lineup?'   (source)
  • Did you take minutes, Brother Chairman? Have you recorded your wise disputations?   (source)
  • She makes jelly, takes the minutes at the P.T.A. and runs a Girl Scout troop.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
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show 48 more with this conextual meaning
  • Not going to detail what new Congress did and said that session and later; minutes are available.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • She got the board to approve two decisions and enter them in the minutes.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
  • Your father plans to retain one old order scribe such as myself to record minutes, take letters, and accompany him to court.   (source)
  • The meeting had started pleasantly enough with the usual reading of the minutes and committee reports, when Davey Cantor burst into the room, looking as though he was crying, and shouted! breathlessly that someone had just told him President Roosevelt was dead.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • The minutes from the last UDC meeting were boring, the topic meandering from side to side to discuss who had died and who was in the hospital and who had retired.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
  • Leamas developed them that night: one film contained as usual the minutes of the Praesidium's last meeting;   (source)
  • He shall attend all meetings of stock-holders and of the Board of Directors and keep the minutes thereof.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (of a meeting)
  • It proved to be an equally dull collection of minutes of partisan meetings.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
  • "Nothing about it in the correspondence," said the governor. Nothing in the minutes. We have not been notified of any such thing.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • The minutes were read.   (source)
  • But there were other days when they settled down to their work almost eagerly, making a tremendous show of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda which were never finished — when the argument as to what they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily involved and abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions, enormous digressions, quarrels threats, even, to appeal to higher authority.   (source)
  • He would keep the minutes on the left hand blackboard and then they would be there when he needed to add another to them.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (of a meeting)
  • They also had tally sticks and the minutes of the last meeting.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • Hans Castorp was not present at its various phases, but only learned about the complicated and dramatic course of events from documents, affidavits, and official minutes devoted to the affair, copies of which were circulated not only in the Berghof, not only in Davos, in the canton of Graubunden, in Switzerland, but also abroad, were sent as far as America, and were made available for study to persons who, one can be sure, would not and could not pay one whit of attention to the…   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
  • He had lost no time, as soon as he discovered there was a possibility of their (Belknap & Jephson) taking over the defense of Clyde, in going over the minutes of the coroner's inquest as well as the doctors' reports and the letters of Roberta and Sondra.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • She hinted that they ought to have (as at the committee-meetings of the Thanatopsis) a "regular order of business," and "the reading of the minutes," but as there were no minutes to read, and as no one knew exactly what was the regular order of the business of being literary, they had to give up efficiency.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
  • Levin heard the secretary hesitatingly read the minutes which he obviously did not himself understand; but Levin saw from this secretary's face what a good, nice, kind-hearted person he was.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • They conferred "as to the necessity of seizing the person of M. le Maire of M. sur M." This phrase, in which there was a great deal of of, is the district-attorney's, written with his own hand, on the minutes of his report to the attorney-general.   (source)
  • The respectability of Mr. Vholes has even been cited with crushing effect before Parliamentary committees, as in the following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney's evidence.   (source)
  • The foregoing letter and the minutes accompanying it being shown to a friend, I received from him the following: Letter from Mr. Benjamin Vaughan.   (source)
  • "May I take the minutes?" asked a zombie.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (of a meeting)
  • But everybody just nods to approve the minutes.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • I hope you don't mind, I had to check something in the minutes from the meeting.   (source)
  • Ah, actually, I don't have those minutes.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (of a meeting)
  • "I move that we read the minutes from the last meeting," said Arvid.   (source)
  • But I shouldn't have announced it like the minutes of the next meeting.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
  • Now we need someone else to take the minutes.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • There were minutes on the file between Banking Section and Special Travel.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
  • Each evening she opened proceedings by reading the minutes of the previous meeting.   (source)
  • It would go in the Minutes then, and the Branch bulletin as well.   (source)
  • He drew up a list of all the clerical staff who might have had access to the minutes.   (source)
  • As secretary to the Praesidium he gave minutes of its most secret proceedings.   (source)
  • If we took minutes.   (source)
  • According to the minutes, there was only one dissenting voice, and it was General George Clinton, not Lee, as he later implied.   (source)
  • "OPINIONS HERE ARE VARIOUS," Joseph Reed confided to his wife, following a council of war during which he had kept the minutes.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (of a meeting)
  • At a council of war on October 16, it was decided that Fort Washing— ton and its garrison should be, in the words of the brief minutes, "retained as long as possible."   (source)
    minutes = formal notes (from a meeting)
  • When I 'read the minutes' I just reach back in my mind and recall what the gabble was the night before-I've got an awfully good memory.   (source)
  • Your minutes are certainly complete.   (source)
  • He came finally to an important conclusion: that the photo copies related not to the minutes themselves, but to the draft minutes.   (source)
  • The draft minutes had been well and carefully photographed: that suggested that the photographer had had time and a room to himself.   (source)
  • It puzzled him that in none of the photostated minutes he had so far received were the pages numbered, that none was stamped with a security classification, and that in the second and fourth copies words were crossed out in pencil or crayon.   (source)
  • It contained the minutes of the last meeting of the Praesidium of the East German Communist Party, the S.E.D. By an odd coincidence there was collateral from another source; the photographs were genuine.   (source)
  • This was evident from his confusion and embarrassment in reading the minutes.   (source)
    minutes = formal notes
  • And then Catchuman having handed over a retainer to Belknap as well as a letter introducing him to Clyde, Belknap had Jephson call up Mason to inform him that Belknap & Jephson, as counsel for Samuel Griffiths on behalf of his nephew, would require of him a detailed written report of all the charges as well as all the evidence thus far accumulated, the minutes of the autopsy and the report of the coroner's inquest.   (source)
  • If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.   (source)
  • My DEAREST SIR: When I had read over your sheets of minutes of the principal incidents of your life, recovered for you by your Quaker acquaintance, I told you I would send you a letter expressing my reasons why I thought it would be useful to complete and publish it as he desired.   (source)
  • In behalf of the Assembly, I urg'd all the various arguments that may be found in the public papers of that time, which were of my writing, and are printed with the minutes of the Assembly; and the governor pleaded his instructions; the bond he had given to observe them, and his ruin if he disobey'd, yet seemed not unwilling to hazard himself if Lord Loudoun would advise it.   (source)
  • …and the manner of their behaviour in the voyage; of which I have a very diverting account by me, which the captain of the ship who carried them over gave me the minutes of, and which he caused his mate to write down at large.   (source)
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show 7 more examples with any meaning
  • I have been wanting to call you on a nearly minutely basis, but I have been waiting until I could form a coherent thought in re An Imperial Affliction.†   (source)
  • It implodes minutely of its own massive gravitation.†   (source)
  • His eyes were heavy-lidded, minutely veined, wrinkled like an elderly mead-drinker's.†   (source)
  • On the final day she watched the trunk wag down the front stairs, on the back of the mover, with an amazing, terrible look of presidency, and supervised everything, every last box, in this fashion, gruesomely and violently white so that her mouth's corner hairs were minutely apparent, but in rigid-backed aristocracy, full face to the important transfer to something better, from this (now that she turned from it) disgracefully shabby flat of a deserted woman and her sons whom she had preserved while a temporary guest.†   (source)
  • Often Eliza, in the midst of long, minutely replenished reminiscence, would grow conscious, while she was purse-lipped in revery, of this annihilating mockery, would slap at his hand angrily as he gooched her, and shake a pursed piqued face at him, saying, with a heavy scorn that set him off into fresh "whahwhahs": "I'll declare, boy!†   (source)
  • Swann's life, from the evening to come, as it would be, after dinner, at her home,—forming, on its celestial passage through the midst of the children and their nursemaids, a little cloud, exquisitely coloured, like the cloud that, curling over one of Poussin's gardens, reflects minutely, like a cloud in the opera, teeming with chariots and horses, some apparition of the life of the gods; casting, finally, on that ragged grass, at the spot on which she stood (at once a scrap of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the fair player, who continued to beat up and catch her shuttlecock until a governess, with a blue feathe†   (source)
  • Now does he feel
    His secret murders sticking on his hands;
    Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;
    Those he commands move only in command,
    Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
    Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
    Upon a dwarfish thief.†   (source)
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meaning too common or rare to warrant focus:

show 10 examples with meaning too common or rare to warrant focus
  • After ten minutes, no one came, so she crept to a spring that pooled in moss, and drank like a deer.   (source)
    minutes = 60-second time periods
  • Five minutes later, he found Beatrice Leep resting under a shady mahogany tree in a stranger's backyard.   (source)
  • They knew that the time a man could cling to a slippery rock in the face of that driving current was a matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as they could up the bank to a point far above where Thornton was hanging on.   (source)
  • A little over five minutes later, a brick sign surrounded by colorful shrubs welcomes us to Brook Falls.†   (source)
  • This half-knowledge works in me like a kind of possession, and for a few minutes I'm taken over by it.†   (source)
  • Liesel placed The Dream Carrier beneath her jacket and began reading it the minute she returned home.†   (source)
  • In a few minutes, she was patting the fresh dough that left her hands looking as if she wore white gloves.†   (source)
  • I watch Glimmer fall, twitch hysterically around on the ground for a few minutes, and then go still.†   (source)
  • i'm waiting there a minute or two when i notice three kids walking up the block from the other direction.†   (source)
  • They would stop for five, ten or fifteen minutes and then start again the moment we drifted off to sleep.†   (source)
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show 40 more examples with meaning too common or rare to warrant focus
  • When the lights went on in the morning, she had a few minutes before Poppy wakened to work at the puzzle.†   (source)
  • Within minutes, sheets of rain were sweeping in, the steady hiss of falling water swelling in my ears.†   (source)
  • When Thelma, a blue and yellow macaw, demands "Kiss me, big boy" for the third time in ten minutes, Mack throws a soda can at her.†   (source)
  • We sat out there in silence for a minute and then Gus said, "I wish we had that swing set sometimes."†   (source)
  • I spent about fifteen minutes composing one last e-mail, which I addressed to every single OASIS user.†   (source)
  • I've been wanting a word — you don't mind if he's a couple of minutes late, do you, Professor Sprout?†   (source)
  • He claimed he could break into a car, disconnect the alarm, and hot-wire the engine, all in less than a minute.†   (source)
  • Mai and Blaine will be in place in ten minutes, and what if he's still here in this stinking office?†   (source)
  • After a few minutes, it pulled up right behind us, and its headlights caught us there in the back of the cab.†   (source)
  • I got the last laugh when I caught the same train 5 minutes later and rode it all the way to Oakland.†   (source)
  • For forty-five minutes, perhaps an hour, the beating went on, long past when Harris fell unconscious.†   (source)
  • I thought for a minute that they were wilting, and we should let the Gardening Crew know they needed more watering.†   (source)
  • "You'll be able to eat in about twenty minutes," Ed Regis said, starting toward the two Land Cruisers.†   (source)
  • After a few minutes August said, "Here's what I can't figure out, Lily—how you knew to come here."†   (source)
  • If I were in Gram's moccasins right this minute, I would want to cool my feet in that river over there.†   (source)
  • They became friends, and except for the fifteen minutes he spent with her, each day seemed that it would never pass.†   (source)
  • One minute he was sitting in the middle of a swarm; the next, they were gone and the sun was on him.†   (source)
  • At two dollars a minute, twenty-five minutes would pay for a subscription to The Wall Street Journal.†   (source)
  • Any minute somebody could find out that Rosen isn't some magic Israeli general who can win no matter what.†   (source)
  • For a long, long minute, none of the men spoke; then Mr. Morrison said softly, "The boy, how is he?"†   (source)
  • Afterward, when she thought about it, it seemed to Winnie that the next few minutes were only a blur.†   (source)
  • Dally stood beside me quietly for a minute, trying to grasp the fact that we had really beaten the Socs.†   (source)
  • There are many of these lovely, pensive girls, the landscape is cluttered with them, there's one born every minute.†   (source)
  • Those dogs could take care of themselves for the few minutes it would take him to do what he had in mind.†   (source)
  • In the dream the boy had already opened the first door and his hand was on the second door and any minute now, he was sure of it, he was going to see God.†   (source)
  • Peter gives me a blank look, and disbelieving, I say, "Wait a minute ...have you never read Harry Potter?"†   (source)
  • One minute you're laughing with the nice salesperson, the next minute you own a time-share in Des Moines.†   (source)
  • A few minutes later, a red waveform appeared in the browser window, moving in step with the other three.†   (source)
  • After ten minutes and nearly as many biscuits, I refilled my cup of tea and went back into the hallway.†   (source)
  • The attaché returned a minute later with a young man in a newsboy's cap who was, in fact, barefoot.†   (source)
  • The doctor told us that without the ventilator Mamaw would die within fifteen minutes, an hour at most.†   (source)
  • The breakfast urns clang as they are moved to each block; the prisoners carrying them groan as they get weaker by the day and the urns get heavier by the minute.†   (source)
  • They should be savoring every hour, every minute left to them, instead of allowing themselves to be overcome by their fears, which would probably turn out to be unfounded.†   (source)
  • Now that she's gone, though, I've begun to realize the significance of every minute you spend with your child.†   (source)
  • After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off.†   (source)
  • A few minutes' walk beyond her house, there was a tree.†   (source)
  • Bernard kept up his racket for another twenty minutes, while Mary just peered out at him, disgusted.†   (source)
  • Controlled by the simulation, he will now murder the people he called innocent not three minutes ago.†   (source)
  • I shifted the rain catcher, only to be unpleasantly surprised a few minutes later when the wind changed once more.†   (source)
  • For over a minute she stood there, frozen, and then her body began to tremble and then shake noticeably.†   (source)
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