minute

Craftsmen can paint whole villages or detailed portraits of people on a grain of rice using minute, or tiny, paintbrushes. Often the works of art are so minute that you can only see them with a magnifying glass.

Minutus is the Latin word for “small,” and it gave rise to both the adjective minute (my-NOOT), or incredibly small, and the noun minute (MIN-it), or 60 seconds of time. Though they are pronounced differently, both words refer to small measurements. An object can be minute, like a flea compared with its dog, and less concrete things can be minute, like your minute chance of winning the lottery. A minute freckle on the side of your nose is a minute detail of your whole face.