synonyms - "Miniscule" vs. "minuscule"


Does the former have a typo or are they synonyms? Do they always have the same meaning? Please enlighten me as I am confused on this matter.



Answer



The word was originally minuscule, borrowed from French. The minuscule spelling has always been the preferred spelling. However, miniscule is not as simple as a typo. According to the OED, the first citation of the miniscule variant is from 1871, so this is a form that has been around quite a long time.


The OED says the following about miniscule:



Variant of MINUSCULE adj., probably arising partly from shift of stress from the second to the first syllable, and partly from association with MINIATURE adj., MINIMUM adj., etc.



So, there are two reasons that miniscule persists as a variant.


The first is the shift in stress. In English, unstressed vowels are often reduced to schwa, [ə], no matter what the fully stressed vowel would have been. Minuscule used to always be pronounced with stress on the second syllable (containing the "u"), and was therefore unambiguously an [u] sound. When minuscule began to get stress on the first syllable, it was no longer clear from hearing the word what the second vowel was.


The second was the existence of semantically similar words that contained the spelling mini, such as miniature and minimum. The word mini is associated with small things.


Therefore, a person spelling the word minuscule, having no auditory cues to indicate the spelling "minu", and knowing other smallness words contain "mini", has every logical reason to think the spelling should be "miniscule".


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