Other forms: minced, mincing, minces
To mince is to cut meat into tiny pieces, usually by machine. Minced beef, mince the garlic, a pound of mince.
In British English mince as a noun is the meat itself, where American English says ground beef — and mincemeat, confusingly, is a sweet fruit mixture with no meat in it now. Not to mince words means to speak bluntly. Note mincing, meaning affectedly dainty in walk; and that mince comes from the Latin for making smaller.
1verbminceTo cut into tiny pieces.
“Mince the garlic finely before adding it to the pan.”
Patternmince + noun (garlic, onion, meat) · finely minced · minced beef · a mincer
2nounmeatMinced meat, in British use.
“I'm making spaghetti bolognese, so I need to buy some mince.”
mince is a fine chopping.
The old word meant to make smaller, and that is the job: cut the meat and cut again until the pieces are tiny.
hooks ontosmall
Old French mincier comes from Latin minutia, smallness, from minuere, to lessen. Minute, diminish and minor come from the same lessening.
Proto-Indo-European
*mey- (small)
Frankish
*minsto
Old French
mincer
Proto-Germanic
*minnisōną — to make less
Proto-West Germanic
*minnisōn
Old English
minsian
Middle English
mincen
English, today
mince
Built from
From Middle English mincen, minsen; partly from Old English minsian, ġeminsian (“to make less, make smaller, diminish”), from Proto-West Germanic minnisōn, from Proto-Germanic minnisōną (“to make less”); partly from Old French mincer, mincier (“to cut into small pieces”), from mince (“slender, slight, puny”), from Frankish minsto, minnisto, superlative of min, minn (“small, less”), from Proto-Germanic minniz (“less”); both from Proto-Indo-European mey- (“small, little”). Cognate with Old Saxon minsōn (“to make less, make smaller”), Old Dutch minson (“to make smaller”), Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌽𐌶𐌽𐌰𐌽 (“to become less, diminish”), Swedish minska (“to reduce, lessen”), Gothic 𐌼𐌹𐌽𐍃 (“slender, slight”). More at min.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA