noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A minor detail, often of negligible importance.

   "They spent all their time on minutiae, never making real progress."

2. 2
   (biometrics, forensics) Any of the major features of a fingerprint that allow prints to be compared. wordnet
3. 3
   Any of the point features on fingerprints used for matching, usually endings and bifurcations of ridges.
4. 4
   a small or minor detail wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms

detailarticleaspectcasecountcrumb

Example

More examples

"They spent all their time on minutiae, never making real progress."

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin minutia, from minūtus (“small, little”), from minuō (“make smaller”).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.