minus

1. mathematicsMade less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity).First known use 15th c.

   Seven minus two is five.

   Synonyms: less · Antonyms: plus

2. informalWithout; deprived of.First known use 19th c.

   I walked out minus my coat.

   Synonyms: lacking, without

plural minuses · plural minusses

1. mathematicsThe minus sign (−).First known use 16th c.

   On the third day a Master Barnard brings me up a slate full of plusses, minusses, x, y, z’s, and other letters of the alphabet, in a most amiable algebraical confusion.

   1835 January, the Sub-Editor [i.e., Edward Howard], “The Life of a Sub-Editor”, in The Metropolitan Magazine, volume XII, number XLV, London: Saunders and Otley, […], page 427

2. mathematicsA negative quantity.First known use 18th c.
3. A downside or disadvantage.First known use 20th c.

   He valued Roderick’s friendship with the highest value he put on anything nowadays. Over the years they had assessed each other’s plusses and minusses and settled for the difference.

   1989, A[udrey] L[ilian] Barker, The Woman Who Talked to Herself, London: Hutchinson, →ISBN, page 111

   2 more examples

   As with LCR tout court the question is less to do with the plusses and minusses of the individual ideologies in themselves than in their relationship with their opposite numbers, in this case of Reason with Emotion.

   2015, Peter Wyeth, “[Commentaries] Reason”, in The Matter of Vision: Affective Neurobiology & Cinema, New Barnet, Herts.: John Libbey Publishing Ltd; Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, page 113

   When Morrison mulls the pluses and minuses associated with rebuking Kelly for undermining the government’s public health messaging, the prime minister faces a genuine substantive dilemma, and that goes to the risks of amplification.

   2021 February 2, Katharine Murphy, “Scott Morrison must heed the lesson of Donald Trump and slap down Craig Kelly”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 27 Apr 2021

1. not comparableBeing a negative quantity; pertaining to a deficit or reduction.First known use 18th c.

   a minus number

2. not comparableThat is below zero by (a specified amount) on a scale.First known use 19th c.

   minus seven degrees

   1 more example

   Arriving during late spring in the satellite's southern hemisphere, Voyager found the coldest body in the solar system, minus 235°C (-391°F).

   1990 August, Rick Gore, “Neptune: Voyager's Last Picture Show”, in National Geographic, volume 178, number 2, page 42

   Synonyms: below zero

3. colloquialnot comparableobsoleteWorse off than before; out of pocket.First known use 19th c.

   The races being finished, we left Epsom for London, Mordaunt's natural vile temper not being at all improved by being three hundred pounds minus by the week's speculation […] .

   1808–10, William Hickey, Memoirs of a Georgian Rake, Folio Society 1995, p. 301

4. not comparablepostpositionalRanking just below (a designated rating).First known use 19th c.

   He got a grade of B minus for his essay.

present singular third person minuses · present singular third person minusses · participle present minusing · participle present minussing · participle past minused · past minused · participle past minussed · past minussed

1. colloquialtransitiveTo subtract.First known use 20th c.

   Four plus one is 5 and you go down because it's minusing, […]

   2011, Laura Christine Bofferding, Expanding the Numerical Central Conceptual Structure

   3 more examples

   For example, in solving the following equation, x + 4 = 9, the child using the negating mechanism will reason, "minussing 4" undoes "plussing 4" therefore, if x + 4 = 9 then x = 5 and will not see any point in using any intermediate steps.

   1981 March, Kevin F[rancis] Collis, Cognitive Development, Mathematics Learning, Information Processing and a Refocusing, Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Individualized Schooling, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, page 9

   (The terms positive and negative feedback are now part of everyday language where the meanings are reversed: in cybernetic systems, positive feedback is undesirable for it indicates that the discrepancy is “plussing,” rather than “minussing” to zero.)

   1990, William T. Scott, “Systems and structures”, in The Possibility of Communication (Approaches to Semiotics; 87), Berlin; New York, N.Y.: Mouton de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 38

   “But you also minussed! … Sam… Sam also minussed seventy-two but he also… one hundred forty-four minus seventy-two equals seventy-two. He also minussed the seventy-two.”

   2012, Jennifer S. Thom, “Opening Mathematical Spaces of Their Own”, in Re-Rooting the Learning Space: Minding Where Children’s Mathematics Grow (New Directions in Mathematics and Science Education; 21), Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, →ISBN, page 299

plural Minuses

1. A surname.