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/maɪnˈɔrəti/ /mənˈɔrəti/ Listen

noun

Minority n. (pl. minorities)

The state of being a minor, or under age.

State of being less or small. (Obs.)

The smaller number; opposed to majority; as, the minority must be ruled by the majority.

Those members of a legislature that belong to the political party which is in the minority in that institution; as, the bill will pass even if the minority are strongly opposed.

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Etymology of 'Minority'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Minority" Quotes from Famous Books

... of the world; they support themselves, and they support those who from infirmity, weakness, age, or youth cannot support themselves. There is room, I think, in the world for both kinds of individualist, though the contemplative individualists are in the minority; and perhaps it must be so, because a certain lassitude is characteristic of them. If they were in the majority in any nation, one would have a simple, patient, unambitious race, who would tend to become the subjects of other more vigorous ...

— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... as I have said, to the scorn of all other women. Such a confession would be an admission that emotion had got the better of her at a critical intellectual moment, and in the eyes of women, as in the eyes of the small minority of genuinely intelligent men, no treason to the higher cerebral centres ...

— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... Tiberius again, notwithstanding the fact that he had saved the empire, Augustus felt that he must a second time submit to his own law. He did not dare contend with the puritanical party, with the more conservative minority in the senate,—the friends of Tiberius,—over this second victim in his family. Without a doubt everything possible was done to hush up the scandal, and there would scarcely have come down to us even a summary notice of the exile of the second Julia ...

— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... exception of an inconsiderable minority of its inhabitants, has never been at all desirous of the emancipation of the slaves. The Democratic party which has ruled the United States for many years past has always been friendly to the slaveholders, who have, with few exceptions, been all members of it (for by a strange perversion both ...

— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... me to do justice to the animated manner in which he delivered this discourse. It produced great effect upon the majority of his hearers; but there was a powerful minority it still more strongly influenced against him; and they continued to interrupt ...

— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

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