Mincing means walking with short affected steps. A mincing walk, mincing steps, mince across the room.
It is mocking, and it has often been used to sneer at men judged effeminate, which is worth knowing before using it. Not mincing your words is a different sense of the same verb — there it means cutting them small to soften them.
1adjectivemincingWalking with short affected steps.
“The vain duke in the play had a mincing walk and a high, silly voice.”
mincing is a way of walking.
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
mince
English, today
mincing
Built from
mince comes 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