mince

Etymology

From Middle English mincen, minsen; partly from Old English minsian, ġeminsian (“to make less, make smaller, diminish”), from Proto-West Germanic *minnisōn, from Proto-Germanic *minnisōną (“to make less”); partly from Old French mincer, mincier (“to cut into small pieces”), from mince (“slender, slight, puny”), from Frankish *minsto, *minnisto, superlative of *min, *minn (“small, less”), from Proto-Germanic *minniz (“less”); both from Proto-Indo-European *mey- (“small, little”). Cognate with Old Saxon minsōn (“to make less, make smaller”), Old Dutch minson (“to make smaller”), Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌽𐌶𐌽𐌰𐌽 (minznan, “to become less, diminish”), Swedish minska (“to reduce, lessen”), Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌽𐍃 (mins, “slender, slight”). More at min.

noun

1. (uncountable) Finely chopped meat; minced meat.
   Mince tastes really good fried in a pan with some chopped onion and tomato.
2. (uncountable) Finely chopped mixed fruit used in Christmas pies; mincemeat.
   During Christmas time my dad loves to eat mince pies.
3. (countable) An affected (often dainty or short and precise) gait.
   A wiry little girl in a starched, lemon-colored party dress, she sassed along with a grownup mince, one hand on her hip, the other supporting a spinsterish umbrella. 1949, Truman Capote, “Children on their Birthdays”, in A Tree of Night and Other Stories, page 36
   She was just the same; she had a light way of walking and she always wore flat heels so she didn't have that mince like most girls. 1963, John Fowles, The Collector, page 15
   His skin was china pale, he walked with a slight mince, and his silver mustache was always trimmed sharp; it was his custom to send a bouquet of pink carnations to the wives of men with whom he dined. 2010, Tom Zoellner, Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World
4. (countable) An affected manner, especially of speaking; an affectation.
   A very moderate degree of accomplishment in this direction would make an end of stage smart speech, which, like the got-up Oxford mince and drawl of a foolish curate, is the mark of a snob. 1896, George Bernard Shaw, “Madame Sans-Gene”, in London Saturday Review
   And, further, who has not heard what someone has christened the "Oxford" mince, where every consonant is mispronounced and every vowel gets a wrong value? 1928, R. M. Pope, The Education Outlook, volume 80, page 285
   … a smiling man, portly and impressive, coming toward them with a dignified mince in his walk. 2008, Opie Read, The Colossus, page 95
5. (countable, Cockney rhyming slang, chiefly in the plural) An eye (from mince pie).
   Lancashire is a bit nazi about speed and the M6 in that area can be either clear or infested with vans and their helicopter. On the good side the vans tend to be on well sighted bridges so just keep the old minces peeled. 2009-05-21, planetdave, “Speed traps”, in PistonHeads, retrieved 2017-03-22

verb

1. (transitive) To make less; to make small.
2. (transitive) To lessen; to diminish; to diminish in speaking; to speak of lightly or slightingly; to minimise.
3. (transitive, rare) To effect mincingly.
4. (transitive, cooking) To cut into very small pieces; to chop finely.
   Butchers often use machines to mince meat.
5. (archaic, transitive, figurative) To suppress or weaken the force of.
   Siren, now mince the sin, / And mollify damnation with a phrase. 1681, John Dryden, The Spanish Friar, or the Double Discovery
6. To say or utter vaguely (not directly or frankly).
   Despite prolonged exposure to harsh conditions, medics say Nora Tallis returned to the Nexus in stable condition. In a statement to HNS, Tallis did not mince words. "Never send me to that hellhole again." 2017, BioWare, Mass Effect: Andromeda (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: ELAADEN (HNS) - Nora Tallis Found Alive
   to mince one's words
   a minced oath
7. (transitive) To affect; to pronounce affectedly or with an accent.
   In some districts of England ll is sounded like w, thus bowd (booud) for BOLD, bw (buu) for BULL, caw (kau) for CALL. But this pronunciation is merely a provincialism, and not to be imitated unless you wish to mince like these blunderers. 1869, Alexander J. Ellis, On Early English Pronunciation, with special reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer, part 1, page 194
   One may hear some speakers in Oxford mince brother into brover (brëvë); Bath into Baf; both into bof. 1905, George Henderson, The Gaelic Dialects, IV, in the Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, published by Kuno Meyer and L. Chr. Stern, volume 5, page 98
   "The preacher said it was sympathetic," she minced the word, remembering Mr. Larsen's manner. 1915, Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
8. (intransitive) To walk with short steps; to walk in a prim, affected manner.
9. (intransitive) To act or talk with affected nicety; to affect delicacy in manner.
   I love going to gay bars and seeing drag queens mince around on stage.