miniature

Etymology

Borrowed from Italian miniatura (“manuscript illumination”), from miniare (“to illuminate”), from Latin miniō (“to colour red”), from minium (“red lead”).

noun

1. Greatly diminished size or form; reduced scale.
2. A small version of something; a model of reduced scale.
   There was a miniature of a whaling ship in a glass bottle over the mantlepiece.
3. A small, highly detailed painting, a portrait miniature.
4. The art of painting such highly detailed miniature works.
5. An illustration in an illuminated manuscript.
6. A musical composition which is short in duration.
   Sacha composed a miniature for strings as a final project at the conservatory.
7. (chess) A chess game which is concluded with very few moves.
8. (roleplaying games, board games) A token in a game representing a unit or character.
   Jack had dozens of miniatures of Napoleonic footsoldiers painted in detailed period regalia for his wargames.
9. Lettering in red; rubric distinction.
10. A particular feature or trait.
    There's no miniature / In her fair face, but is a copious theme / Which would, discoursed at large of, make a volume. 1627, Philip Massinger, “The Great Duke of Florence”, in William Gifford, editor, The Plays of Philip Massinger, published 1845, act 5, scene 3, page 221

adj

1. Smaller than normal.
   I find miniature dogs annoying; they seem to yap more than full-size dogs.
   Scientists have grown miniature human brains in test tubes, creating a "tool" that will allow them to watch how the organs develop in the womb and, they hope, increase their understanding of neurological and mental problems. ¶ Just a few millimetres across, the "cerebral organoids" are built up of layers of brain cells with defined regions that resemble those seen in immature, embryonic brains. 2013-09-06, Alok Jha, “Miniature brains grown in lab”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 13, page 39

verb

1. (transitive) To make smaller than normal; to reproduce in miniature.
   1755, John Shebbeare, An Answer to a Pamphlet, called A Second Letter to the People, London: M. Cooper, p. 29, If it be ever so little removed, or seen thro’ the miniaturing End of the Perspective Glass, it either wholly escapes their Sight, or appears to them a mere Minutity.
   The smile of the babe was in my eye, and in my heart. I saw miniatur’d forth, the features of the murdered Edward. 1780, Samuel Jackson Pratt, Emma Corbett, Bath: Pratt and Clinch, Volume 2, Letter 67, p. ,101
   c. 1807, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, letter to Joseph Cottle, cited in Joseph Cottle, Early Recollections, Chiefly Relating to the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, London: Longman, Rees, 1837, Volume 2, p. 131, Now what the globe is in geography, miniaturing in order to manifest the truth, such is a poem to that image of God, which we were created into […]
   1968, Samuel R. Delany, Nova, New York: Doubleday, Chapter 5, […] a moon holds its gray glories miniatured in rock and dust.
   2009, Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching, New York: Nan A. Talese, pp. 98-99, Dad had had Lily’s Haiti photos developed, and […] among them was a sunset miniatured in purple […]