Definition of "minim"

minim

/ˈmɪ.nɪm/

noun
plural minims
1. (music) A half note, drawn as a semibreve with a stem.
2. A unit of volume, in the Imperial and U.S. customary systems, 1⁄60 fluid drachm. Approximately equal to 1 drop, 62 μL or 0.9 grain (weight) of water.
  Quotations
  He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders.
  1886, Robert Louis Stephenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
3. A short vertical stroke used in handwriting.
4. Anything very minute; applied to animalcula and the like.
5. (zoology) The smallest kind of worker in a leaf-cutter ant colony.
6. A little man or being; a dwarf.
  Quotations
  These as a line thir[sic] long dimension drew,Streaking the ground with sinuous trace;not all Minims of Nature; some of Serpent kindeWondrous in length and corpulence […]
  1667, John Milton, “(please specify the book number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,
7. A small fish; a minnow.
8. A short poetical encomium.
  Quotations
  To make one minim of thy poor handmaid
  1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie