Just a quick note before we start, this episode originally aired back in October for all the

Grammar-Pelusians who support the show. We're able to do fun bonus episodes like this because

of you. So thank you. Now, enjoy this bonus conversation with Jess Zaffaris.

Greetings, Grammar-Palozians. I'm here today with Jess Safaris. You may know who are as the co-host of the Words Unravel podcast. She's also the author of the brand new book, Useless Etymology, that I absolutely loved. We spent the whole main episode talking about wonderful words from there, but there are so many more.

So we wanted to talk about more. Jess, welcome back to the grammar paloosa segment.

Thank you so much. I love this show, and I'm so excited to be back.

Oh, thank you. So the word mini has such a fascinating history. I was so surprised its connection

to the word red, the color.

Yeah. So the miniature and thus mini as a shortening of miniature, which is what it is.

The first recorded instances of mini being short for anything are based on like mini camera and

mini skirt, all miniature things. But the original sense of miniature had nothing to do with

size, but with color. So miniature is unrelated to words like minuscule, minimum, minus, and

minor. And instead, it's related to the Latin miniare, which means to paint red from

minium, which was the name of a lead-based red paint used to illuminate medieval manuscripts. If you go look at

medium or if you look for medieval manuscript illuminations, you will find that many of them have

this very distinctive red-orange color. And that was what this was based on. And it evolved over

time, the meaning of this word, miniature, evolved over time, because the paintings in illuminated

manuscripts were, A, generally quite small, and B, a broader range of available pigments

reduced the reliance on minimum in illuminations, so the reduced synonymy between minimaum

and illuminations combined with the related sounds of like minimum and minuscule shifted the definition

of the assumed origin. Here's another folk etymology example of miniature to what we have today.

And then another thing that sort of solidified the modern sense was the portrait miniature,

...