Mince vs Falter - What's the difference?

mince | falter |

As nouns the difference between mince and falter

is that mince is (uncountable) finely chopped meat while falter is butterfly.

As a verb mince

is to make less; make small.

mince

English

Alternative forms

* (l)

Noun

(uncountable) Finely chopped meat.

Mince tastes really good fried in a pan with some chopped onion and tomato.

(uncountable) Finely chopped mixed fruit used in Christmas pies; mincemeat.

During Christmas time my dad loves to eat mince pies.

(countable) An affected (often dainty or short and precise) gait.

* Truman Capote, Children on their Birthdays : (rfdate)

A wiry little girl in a starched, lemon-colored party dress, she sassed along with a grownup mince , one hand on her hip, the other supporting a spinsterish umbrella.

* John Fowles: (rfdate):

She was just the same; she had a light way of walking and she always wore flat heels so she didn't have that mince like most girls. She didn't think at all about the men when she moved. Like a bird.

* 2010 , Tom Zoellner, Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World :

His skin was china pale, he walked with a slight mince , and his silver mustache was always trimmed sharp; it was his custom to send a bouquet of pink carnations to the wives of men with whom he dined.

(countable) An affected manner, especially of speaking; an affectation.

* George Bernard Shaw: (rfdate)

A very moderate degree of accomplishment in this direction would make an end of stage smart speech, which, like the got-up Oxford mince and drawl of a foolish curate, is the mark of a snob.

* 1928 , R. M. Pope, in The Education Outlook , volume 80, page 285:

And, further, who has not heard what someone has christened the "Oxford" mince , where every consonant is mispronounced and every vowel gets a wrong value?

* 2008 , Opie Read, The Colossus , page 95:

[...] a smiling man, portly and impressive, coming toward them with a dignified mince in his walk.

Quotations

* 1849 , Herman Melville, Mardi, and a Voyage Thither : *: Not, — let me hurry to say, — that I put hand in tar bucket with a squeamish air, or ascended the rigging with a Chesterfieldian mince .

Verb

(minc)

To make less; make small.

To lessen; diminish; to diminish in speaking; speak of lightly or slightingly; minimise.

(rare) To effect mincingly.

(cooking) To cut into very small pieces; to chop fine.

Butchers often use machines to mince meat.

To suppress or weaken the force of; to extenuate; to palliate; to tell by degrees, instead of directly and frankly; to clip, as words or expressions; to utter half and keep back half of.

I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say — "I love you." —

To mince one's words

a minced oath

* Dryden

Siren, now mince the sin, / And mollify damnation with a phrase.

To affect; to pronounce affectedly or with an accent.

* 1869 , Alexander J. Ellis, On Early English Pronunciation, with special reference to Shakespeare and Chaucer , part 1, page 194:

In some districts of England ll'' is sounded like ''w'', thus ''bowd'' (booud) for BOLD, ''bw'' (buu) for BULL, ''caw (kau) for CALL. But this pronunciation is merely a provincialism, and not to be imitated unless you wish to mince like these blunderers.

* 1905 , George Henderson, The Gaelic Dialects, IV'', in the ''Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie , published by Kuno Meyer and L. Chr. Stern, volume 5, page 98:

One may hear some speakers in Oxford mince brother'' into ''brover'' (brëvë); ''Bath'' into ''Baf''; ''both'' into ''bof .

* 1915 , Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark :

"The preacher said it was sympathetic," she minced the word, remembering Mr. Larsen's manner.

To walk with short steps; to walk in a prim, affected manner.

* The daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go. -- III. 16.

* I'll turn two mincing steps into a manly stride. —

At the last moment Mollie, the foolish, pretty white mare who drew Mr. Jones's trap, came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump of sugar.

To act or talk with affected nicety; to affect delicacy in manner.

I love going to gay bars and seeing drag queens mince around on stage.

(archaic) To diminish the force of.

Usage notes

Current usage in the sense of "weaken the force of" is limited to the phrase "mince words"; e.g., "I won't mince words with you".

Derived terms

* mincemeat * mince pie * mince words * minsitive

References

* ----

falter

English

Noun

(-)

unsteadiness.

Verb

(en verb)

To waver or be unsteady.

* Wiseman

He found his legs falter .

(ambitransitive) To stammer; to utter with hesitation, or in a weak and trembling manner.

* Byron

And here he faltered forth his last farewell.

* Milton

With faltering speech and visage incomposed.

To fail in distinctness or regularity of exercise; said of the mind or of thought.

* I. Taylor

Here indeed the power of disinct conception of space and distance falters .

To stumble.

(figuratively) To lose faith or vigor; to doubt or abandon (a cause).

And remember, comrades, your resolution must never falter .

To hesitate in purpose or action.

* Shakespeare

Ere her native king / Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms.

To cleanse or sift, as barley.

(Halliwell)