Other forms: minima, minimums
The minimum is the smallest amount allowed or needed. A minimum of five, the minimum wage, keep it to a minimum.
The plural is minima in technical writing and minimums elsewhere. As an adjective it goes before the noun: minimum age, minimum charge, minimum requirements. The opposite is maximum. Note bare minimum, meaning the least anybody could get away with; minimal, which means very small rather than smallest; and that minimum wage is a legal floor rather than a recommendation.
1nounminimumThe smallest amount allowed or needed.
“The minimum is four and everybody sends eight.”
2adjectivepossibleSmallest allowed or possible.
“There is a minimum charge whether you use it or not.”
minimum is a smallest amount.
Latin minimum is the neuter of minimus, smallest — the superlative of parvus, small. English borrowed the Latin word unchanged, along with maximum, and both keep their Latin plurals in scientific writing.
Proto-Indo-European
*mey- (small)
Latin
minimum
English, today
minimum
Built from
Learned borrowing from Latin minimum., neuter form of minimus (“least, smallest”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA