/ˈmaɪnəs/
[preposition] Used to show that one number or amount is being taken away from another, or that something is missing or not included. It can also describe a temperature below zero or a grade slightly below a letter grade, like B minus.
The word 'minus' is simply the Latin word for 'less' — mathematicians borrowed it whole and never looked back.
The story of 'minus' is one of the most direct borrowings in the English language. It comes straight from Latin, where 'minus' was the neuter form of the adjective 'minor', meaning 'smaller' or 'less'. Both 'minus' and 'minor' grew from the same root: the Latin adjective 'parvus' had a comparative form built on the stem 'min-', giving 'minor' (smaller) and the adverb 'minus' (less, to a lesser degree). This root traces back even further, to the Proto-Indo-European root '*mei-', meaning 'small' or 'to lessen'.
In classical Latin, 'minus' was used as an adverb meaning simply 'less'. Roman writers used it constantly in everyday speech and formal writing alike — if you paid less than expected, you paid 'minus'. If someone was thought of as lesser, they were regarded 'minus'. It was a workhorse word, functional and precise, which is exactly why mathematicians found it so useful.
When European scholars began developing a shared language for mathematics during the medieval period, Latin was the natural choice for notation and terminology. The symbol we recognise today — the short horizontal dash (−) — began appearing in German manuscripts in the late 15th century, around the 1480s. The mathematician Johannes Widmann is often credited with one of the earliest printed uses of the minus sign in his 1489 arithmetic book 'Behende und hübsche Rechenung auff allen Kauffmanschaften'. The word 'minus' accompanied this symbol as its spoken name.
English adopted 'minus' in the 15th century, directly from Latin, largely through the influence of scholarly and mathematical texts. By the 1600s it was firmly established in English arithmetic writing. What makes this borrowing unusual is how little the word changed — no journey through Old French, no transformation through Middle English phonetic shifts. It arrived in English almost exactly as it had existed in Rome two thousand years earlier.
Over time, 'minus' expanded beyond pure mathematics into everyday English. People began using it informally to mean 'without' or 'lacking', as in 'he came back minus his wallet'. This figurative use became common in the 20th century and is now a perfectly natural part of spoken English. The word also gave English the prefix 'mini-' through a related path: Latin 'minor' → Medieval Latin 'miniare' (to make small) → Italian 'minuetto' → English 'minuet', and separately Latin 'minor' → English 'minor', 'minute' (meaning tiny), and eventually the modern prefix 'mini-' as in 'miniskirt' or 'minibus'.
It is worth pausing on the rich family this single Latin root has produced. From that Proto-Indo-European stem '*mei-' came Latin 'minuere' (to reduce) → English 'diminish' (via Latin 'diminuere' → Old French 'diminuer' → Middle English 'diminishen'); Latin 'minutus' (made small) → Old French 'menu' → English 'menu' (originally meaning a detailed, small list); and Latin 'minor' → Old French 'mineur' → English 'minor'. The concept of smallness, it turns out, has left an enormous footprint in our language.