minuet

[ min-yoo-et ]

/ ˌmɪn yuˈɛt /

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noun

a slow, stately dance in triple meter, popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.

a piece of music for such a dance or in its rhythm.

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Origin of minuet

1665–75; <French menuet, equivalent to menu small (see menu) + -et-et; so called from the shortness of the dancers' steps

Words nearby minuet

Minton, mint sauce, minty, Minucius Felix, minuend, minuet, Minuit, minus, minuscule, minus sight, minus sign

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use minuet in a sentence

All along, the atomic minuet with Tehran has been built on assumptions—ours and theirs—that are, as it turns out, erroneous.
Iraq Is Not Our War Anymore. Let It Be Iran’s Problem.|Christopher Dickey|July 17, 2014|DAILY BEAST
And “Visiting”—about a father-son road trip to Narragansett, R.I.—is a prickly minuet of paternal longing.
Great Fiction Missed by The New York Times|Taylor Antrim|December 15, 2011|DAILY BEAST
The first was the private, then public, minuet of reassurances to the two visitors.
Obama's New Buddies|Leslie H. Gelb|May 8, 2009|DAILY BEAST
Frivolity enveloped the company as with a silken veil, and yet everything moved as politely and as sedately as a minuet.
Skipper Worse|Alexander Lange Kielland

The hedges are shaped into peacocks, and not unfrequently into ladies and gentlemen dancing a minuet.
Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808|Lt-Col. Pinkney
Harlequin had recruited a columbine and a shepherdess, and he introduced these ladies as partners for the promised minuet.
The Animal Story Book|Various
They tell me she walks through mathematics like a young duchess through the minuet.
A Hoosier Chronicle|Meredith Nicholson
I had never seen the minuet danced with more grace and spirit.
The Rose of Old St. Louis|Mary Dillon

British Dictionary definitions for minuet

minuet

/ (ˌmɪnjʊˈɛt) /

noun

a stately court dance of the 17th and 18th centuries in triple time

a piece of music composed for or in the rhythm of this dance, sometimes as a movement in a suite, sonata, or symphonySee also scherzo

Word Origin for minuet

C17: from French menuet dainty (referring to the dance steps), from menu small

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012