Other forms: miniatures
A miniature is a very small painting, or a very small copy of something. A portrait miniature, painted in miniature, a miniature of the house.
The portrait miniature was a genuine art form, painted on ivory or vellum, and it did the job photographs later took over — a small image of somebody to carry. In miniature means on a small scale. Miniature is also an adjective: a miniature railway, a miniature poodle. Note that the word has nothing to do with minute or small: it comes from the red pigment used in illuminating manuscripts.
1nounminiatureA very small painting or a very small copy.
“My brother builds miniatures of famous ships inside glass bottles.”
2adjectivesmallVery small of its kind.
“The children loved the miniature horses at the farm park.”
miniature is a small image or version.
Italian miniatura comes from miniare, to colour with minium — red lead, used in illuminated manuscripts. The pictures were small, so the word for painting in red became the word for smallness, entirely by association.
Italian
miniatura
English, today
miniature
Built from
Borrowed from Italian miniatura. Borrowed from Italian miniatura (“manuscript illumination”), from miniare (“to illuminate”), from Latin miniō (“to colour red”), from minium (“red lead, minium”). Not related to minimum, minor or min (which are all from a different root, mey-), though the sense development may have been influenced by association with them or.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire