menor

Forms

menor m or f (masculine and feminine plural menores)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish menor, inherited from Latin minor (“smaller, less”), from the accusative form.^[1][2][3] In Latin it served as the comparative of parvus (“small”), and its neuter is minus, the source of Spanish menos.^[4][5][3]

The same word is Portuguese menor, Galician menor, Catalan menor, Occitan menor, Italian minore and the Old French meneur.^[6][7] Old Portuguese also had Old Galician-Portuguese meor.^[7] French kept the nominative form in French moindre, and later borrowed the learned mineur from Latin.^[8]

The Latin adjective continues Proto-Italic *minōs (“less”).^[9][1] De Vaan traces it to a comparative Proto-Indo-European *meih₁-iōs- (“less”), beside *moih₁-u̯o- (“small, little”);^[9][1] Wiktionary gives the root as *mey- (“small”).^[9][1] The verb minuō (“to lessen”) belongs to the same family.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to about 1140, and the CDH's first hit is in the Cantar de mio Cid (known from a 14th-century copy), where after a victory a todos los menores cayeron ciento marcos de plata “to all the lesser men fell a hundred marks of silver”: there it means the men of lower rank in the Cid's host.^[3][10] The DEMel lists the Cid and the Fuero de Avilés (c. 1155) among the first records.^[11] In a 13th-century inventory, porcos maores and menores are the larger and the smaller pigs.^[10]

Semantic evolution

From the earliest texts the word compared size, quantity and age: the Fazienda de Ultra Mar (c. 1200) calls the younger of two daughters la menor, and Alfonso X's Lapidario has stones that are large, middling and menores.^[10][12] Covarrubias (1611) records menor used alone for a son under the authority of his father, menor de edad “under age”.^[5] The Diccionario de Autoridades adds the legal sense of a ward who has not reached the age the law sets for managing his property, and the logical sense of the minor premise of a syllogism.^[13]

The Academy's 1884 dictionary gave the musical senses of the minor mode and the minor third and interval.^[14] Today the word also names the Franciscans, the Order of the Hermanos Menores, a kind of ashlar in building, and the lowest class of Latin grammar in the old schools; the phrase al por menor means “retail”.^[2] The compound pormenor “detail”, from por menor “in detail”, is first recorded in 1817.^[3][2]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid calls the lower-ranking men los menores.^[3][10]
• c. 1200 – the Fazienda de Ultra Mar uses la menor for the younger daughter.^[10]
• 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it as the comparative of pequeño.^[12]
• 1335 – the diminutive menorete is recorded.^[3]
• 1495 – Nebrija gives the Latin minor and minus.^[15]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records menor for a son under age.^[5]
• 1734 – the Diccionario de Autoridades gives the legal and the logical senses.^[13]
• 1817 – the noun pormenor “detail” is first recorded.^[3]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary adds the musical senses.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. smaller, less: lower than something else in quantity, intensity or quality; with the article, the smallest, the least: Elige la caja menor.^[2][1]
2. Less important than something else of the same kind: los poetas menores del Siglo de Oro.^[2]
3. Of a person, younger than another; with the article, the youngest: Es la menor de cuatro hermanas.^[2][1]
4. underage, not yet of legal age (short for menor de edad).^[2][1]
5. Franciscan, of the Order of Friars Minor.^[2]
6. (music) Of a mode, interval or third, minor.^[14]

Noun

1. (law) A minor, a person under the age of majority.^[2][1]
2. (Dominican Republic, Venezuela) A child, a kid.^[1]
3. (architecture) An ashlar whose face is shorter than the part set into the wall.^[2]
4. (in the plural, historical) The third class of Latin grammar, where the easiest constructions were taught.^[2]
5. (philosophy, feminine) The minor premise (premisa) of a syllogism.^[2][13]

Word family

• menormente
• pormenor
• menorete
• minoría

Related words

• menos
• mínimo
• minúsculo
• aminorar
• Latin minor
• Portuguese menor

Usage notes

Menor has one form for both genders (el hijo menor, la hija menor).^[1] The phrases al por menor “retail, in small quantities” and por menor “in detail” are fixed expressions.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. menor
3. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. menos
4. ^ Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. menor
5. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1129
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. s.v. minor
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ a b c de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. menor
11. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. menor
12. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. menor
13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 542
14. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 694
15. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 379