minute
part of speech
noun (minute, minutes); adjective minute (said «my-NEWT», very small)
meaning for a pupil
1) A minute is a short length of time; sixty minutes make an hour. tree →
2) A minute can mean a very short time: «Wait a minute». tree →
3) Said differently, minute means very, very small. tree →
sense in the lessons
one sixtieth of an hour: an hour has 60 minutes and a minute has 60 seconds; the long hand of a clock is the minute hand; phrases: «a minute», «wait a minute», «just a minute», «at the last minute», «minute hand»
examples
- C. to denote the absence of degrees, minutes, or seconds in their sexagesi- mal notation. (Mordell, The Origin of Letters and Numerals according to Sefer Yetzirah (1914)) tree →
- An hour has 60 minutes. tree →
- Tom walks for 15 minutes each day. tree →
- The bus comes in 20 minutes. tree →
- A minute has 60 seconds. tree →
- Wait a minute, I'm nearly ready! tree →
- Boil the egg for 5 minutes. tree →
- We finished the project at the last minute. tree →
- The minute hand points to 6 at half past. tree →
- “Wait a minute!” called the Scarecrow. tree →
note
«An hour has 60 minutes.» «A minute has 60 seconds.» To change hours into minutes, multiply by 60. Trap: do not add minutes and hours without changing one into the other. Trap: «minute» (time) and «minute» (very small) are spelled the same but said differently.
In the corpora
- Employers often glance at a CV for less than a minute, so grown-ups fuss over every word.
- Lenders make borrowing look easy: "Cash in minutes!", "Buy now, pay later!".
- Babies feed from the breast or a bottle, often for twenty minutes or more, and they need calm to settle.
- A few quiet minutes, a hug, or a simple «Are you OK?» often help most.
- Usually the facts are small and boring: a car, a van, an ambulance, a police car for twenty minutes.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «minute» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.