00:00:13
Mysteries of Vernacular
00:00:17
something distinctively smaller
00:00:19
than other members of its type or class.
00:00:23
Miniature traces its roots to the Latin, minium,
00:00:27
which meant, "red lead".
00:00:30
Minium referred, in particular, to a compound of lead
00:00:33
used as a pigment in Medieval times.
00:00:36
In those days, because there were no printing presses,
00:00:40
groups of scribes were tasked with
00:00:42
painstakingly copying all books by hand.
00:00:46
Whenever they needed to denote a chapter break
00:00:48
or a division of text,
00:00:50
scribes would switch from standard black
00:00:53
to the red pigment, minium.
00:00:57
Another important visual device used to increase
00:01:00
the prominence of certain portions of text
00:01:03
was to set them off
00:01:04
with large, ornate, and colorful capital letters,
00:01:07
often surrounded by tiny, detailed paintings.
00:01:12
The Italians began to refer
00:01:14
to these elaborate and diminutive paintings
00:01:16
as miniatura, illuminations.
00:01:20
Because of the necessarily small size of the paintings,
00:01:24
miniatura began to be associated with all things wee
00:01:28
and spawned to other words with the same base,
00:01:31
like the Latin minimum, for least.
00:01:36
Miniatura was transmuted into English
00:01:38
in the 16th century as the word, miniature,
00:01:42
and since that time,
00:01:44
it has had the exact same meaning we use today.
русский▼
English
