Okay, so it is "minuscule." Funny, when I typed "miniscule" into Word, it acted like it was spelled correctly. (So maybe Word is stupider than Google?)
(Word is my "this word is showing up as misspelled by Google; is it really misspelled or not?" check. I am a fairly good speller but there are a few words that always defeat me and I have to check on them.)
I thought "minuscule" only applied to fonts, I guess.
Still, I'm irritated at myself for not knowing the correct spelling.
(some sites seem to accept that "miniscule" is a word, a few even calling it a "variant spelling." But then again, I am sure there are sites out there claiming that "ur" - as showed up in my e-mail from someone the other day - is an acceptable variant for "your." No. In my book Ur is ONLY valid as the place where Abram used to live.)
So maybe I need to write "minuscule" fifty times (the standard way of dealing with misspelled spelling words when I was in school) so I remember it.
1 comment:
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 8th Edition, to my way of thinking the ancient Ur-dictionary - I've had this since 1981 - lists "miniscule" as an acceptable variant, but "minuscule" gets the etymology: from Latin "minusculus," "rather small."
I wonder if "miniscule" was influenced by phrases like "De minimis non curat lex."
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