Mysteries of vernacular: Miniature - Jessica Oreck

Transcriber: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Bedirhan Cinar

Mysteries of Vernacular

Miniature,

something distinctively smaller

than other members of its type or class.

Miniature traces its roots to the Latin, <i>minium</i>,

which meant, "red lead".

Minium referred, in particular, to a compound of lead

used as a pigment in Medieval times.

In those days, because there were no printing presses,

groups of scribes were tasked with

painstakingly copying all books by hand.

Whenever they needed to denote a chapter break

or a division of text,

scribes would switch from standard black

to the red pigment, minium.

Another important visual device used to increase

the prominence of certain portions of text

was to set them off

with large, ornate, and colorful capital letters,

often surrounded by tiny, detailed paintings.

The Italians began to refer

to these elaborate and diminutive paintings

as <i>miniatura</i>, illuminations.

Because of the necessarily small size of the paintings,

miniatura began to be associated with all things wee

and spawned to other words with the same base,

like the Latin <i>minimum</i>, for least.

Miniatura was transmuted into English

in the 16th century as the word, <i>miniature</i>,

and since that time,

it has had the exact same meaning we use today.