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say it: MAHY-nur
minor is an adjective, noun and verb meaning "of lesser importance or stature or rank". It is pronounced /ˈmaɪnɚ/ — MAHY-nur. It carries 12 recorded senses.
of lesser importance or stature or rank
“a minor poet”
“had a minor part in the play”
“a minor official”
“many of these hardy adventurers were minor noblemen”
“minor back roads”
(of a scale or mode) having half steps between the second and third degrees, and (usually) the fifth and sixth degrees, and the seventh and eighth degrees
“the minor keys”
“in B flat minor”
music
of lesser seriousness or danger
“suffered only minor injuries”
“some minor flooding”
“a minor tropical disturbance”
of your secondary field of academic concentration or specialization
relatively moderate, limited, or small
“a small business”
“a newspaper with a modest circulation”
“small-scale plans”
“a pocket-size country”
a young person of either sex
“she writes books for children”
“they're just kids”
“`tiddler' is a British term for youngster”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for minor come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.