minus
/ˈmaɪ.nəs/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.00 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
prep
Made less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity).
noun
The minus sign (−).
noun
noun
A downside or disadvantage.
adj
Being a negative quantity; pertaining to a deficit or reduction.
Example Sentences
- "Seven minus two is five."
- "I walked out minus my coat."
- "On the third day a Master Barnard brings me up a slate full of plusses, minusses, x, y, z’s, and other letters of the alphabet, in a most amiable algebraical confusion."
- "He valued Roderick’s friendship with the highest value he put on anything nowadays. Over the years they had assessed each other’s plusses and minusses and settled for the difference."
- "As with LCR tout court the question is less to do with the plusses and minusses of the individual ideologies in themselves than in their relationship with their opposite numbers, in this case of Reason with Emotion."
- "When Morrison mulls the pluses and minuses associated with rebuking Kelly for undermining the government’s public health messaging, the prime minister faces a genuine substantive dilemma, and that goes to the risks of amplification."
Etymology
From Middle English mynus, from Latin minus, neuter form of minor, comparative form of parvus (“small, little”), from the Proto-Indo-European root *mey- (“few, small”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈmaɪ.nəs/
- British English: /ˈmaɪ.nəs/