Menu

From the Latin word minuere, meaning to lessen, a whole family of English words has developed: in addition to menu they include diminish, minute, minor, minus, mince, minuet, and even, through a misunderstanding, minnow. The Latin adjective minutus, meaning small, was formed from minuere, and it was this word that directly gave rise to minute—meaning a small part of time—and minutes—meaning the small, detailed notes taken during a meeting. Minutus also developed into the French word menu, which restaurateurs applied to a small list of set meals as opposed to the complete list of individual dishes represented on the carte or card. Naturally, the paired terms menu and carte entered English at about the same time, early in the nineteenth century. The French, incidentally, also used the word menu to mean small fish and this sense of the word may have influenced the pronunciation of the unrelated Middle English word menawe, the name of the tiny fish we now call the minnow. Finally, the French menu, not in its sense of list of food or tiny fish but in its earlier sense of small and detailed, gave rise to a dance known as the menuet characterized by short, dainty steps. The dance and its name, respelt as minuet, were introduced to England in the late eighteenth century.