minim

noun

1. A half note, drawn as a semibreve with a stem.
2. A unit of volume, in the Imperial and U.S. customary systems, ¹⁄₆₀ fluid drachm. Approximately equal to 1 drop, 62 μL or 0.9 grain (weight) of water.

   “He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders.”

3. A short vertical stroke used in handwriting.
4. Anything very minute; applied to animalcula and the like.

   “the minims of existence”

5. The smallest kind of worker in a leaf-cutter ant colony.
6. A little man or being; a dwarf.

   “These as a line thir^([sic]) long dimension drew, Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not all Minims of Nature; some of Serpent kinde Wondrous in length and corpulence […]”

7. A small fish; a minnow.
8. A short poetical encomium.

   “To make one minim of thy poor handmaid”

9. A member of a Roman Catholic religious order of friars founded by Saint Francis of Paola in fifteenth-century Italy.