Transcriber: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar
Mysteries of Vernacular
Miniature,
something distinctively smaller
than other members of its type or class.
Miniature traces its roots to the Latin, minium,
which meant, "red lead".
Minium referred, in particular, to a compound of lead
used as a pigment in Medieval times.
In those days, because there were no printing presses,
groups of scribes were tasked with
painstakingly copying all books by hand.
Whenever they needed to denote a chapter break
or a division of text,
scribes would switch from standard black
to the red pigment, minium.
Another important visual device used to increase
the prominence of certain portions of text
was to set them off
with large, ornate, and colorful capital letters,
often surrounded by tiny, detailed paintings.
The Italians began to refer
to these elaborate and diminutive paintings
as miniatura, illuminations.
Because of the necessarily small size of the paintings,
miniatura began to be associated with all things wee
and spawned to other words with the same base,
like the Latin minimum, for least.
Miniatura was transmuted into English
in the 16th century as the word, miniature,
and since that time,
it has had the exact same meaning we use today.