Words / M / General

mince

verb/mɪns/

C1CEFR level
55/100Rarity: uncommon
NeutralRegister

To walk with short, dainty, affectedly delicate steps.

She minced across the ballroom in shoes far too tight for comfort.

Similar: prance, sashay, trip

Origin: From Old French 'mincier', to cut small.

Topic: affected gait in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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