Etymology: < Italian miniatura small brightly coloured image used to decorate books, manuscripts, etc., art of painting these images (a1342; probably a1566 in sense ‘small portrait’) < Italian miniat- , past participial stem of miniare to decorate with small images (a1342; < classical Latin miniāre miniate v.) + -ura -ure suffix¹. Compare post-classical Latin miniatura (1478), French †mignature (1645), miniature (1653) small portrait, art of painting in miniature (1840 in sense A. 6).Italian miniatura originally denoted the painting of small images to decorate the initial letters of chapters in manuscripts (compare the use of post-classical Latin miniare in the sense ‘to rubricate’). As these images were necessarily small, the term came to be used for small portraits, probably reinforced by an association by folk etymology with (ultimately classical Latin) min- in minore minor adj., etc., which has probably also affected the development of the extended senses in English and in other languages. With the phrase in miniature (see senses A. 1b, A. 5a) compare French en miniature (1665 as en mignature ; 1829 in sense A. 1b), Italian in miniatura (a1828 in sense A. 1b). The pronunciation, which must originally have had three unstressed syllables in succession, a pattern which is rare in English, appears to have been subject to variation and simplification throughout its history. Early spelling variants with a single vowel for the -ia- of the Italian probably reflect trisyllabic pronunciations of the type later recorded by Walker (1806), Knowles (1835), and Smart (1857), and noted as an alternative by Worcester (1860) and Webster (1864). N.E.D. (1906) gives the pronunciation as (mi·niătiŭɹ, mi·nitiŭɹ) /ˈmɪnɪətjə(r)/, /ˈmɪnɪtjə(r)/. Early editions of D. Jones Eng. Pronouncing Dict. favour a variant with the sequence /nɪə/ realized as /njə/, but later editions mark this as growing less common, and it is abandoned entirely in the 15th edition (1997).

Etymology: < miniature n. Compare French miniaturer (1801 in sense ‘to paint miniatures’, subsequently also in sense ‘to make a miniature (representation) of something’). N.E.D. (1906) gives the pronunciation as (mi·niătiŭɹ, mi·nitiŭɹ) /ˈmɪnɪətjə(r)/ /ˈmɪnɪtjə(r)/.