means a unit of time equal to sixty seconds, or one-sixtieth of an hour; (as a separate sense) extremely small or finely detailed.

from Both words trace to Latin minutus, 'made small,' from minuere, 'to lessen.' The time-unit sense comes through the medieval Latin phrase pars minuta prima, 'the first small part' — the first division of an hour into sixty — while the 'second' was pars minuta secunda, the second such division. The adjective meaning 'tiny' kept closer to the original Latin sense of smallness, which is why the same spelling splits into two pronunciations and two lives: the clock's MIN-it and the magnifying glass's my-NEWT.