Talk:Double minute

Untitled
There is no pronunciation for this article's title. Since minute could easily be pronounced two ways (as in "be there in one minute" or "that is a minute quantity", it is important that this be added). Personally, I don't know which pronunciation is correct for this. 174.1.99.32 (talk) 19:21, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

The earliest English reference I found in Medline (PubMed) called them "double minute chromatin bodies (D.B.)" suggesting a adjectival and size-related pronunciation for "minutes", although modern usage is that of a noun. I suspect that modern pronunciation would likely shift to that of a noun and therefore be that of the time-related word. However, size-related pronunciation would be truer to the historical origin. The plural form (ending in "s") makes sense only as a noun, so grammatically "minutes" must be a noun. The time-related pronunciation is also easier. Tracing the etymology back before the application to chromatin bodies, probably will reveal that both pronunciations stem from the same original word, because the time-interval, the minute, is a minute fraction of an hour. I doubt therefore, that either pronunciation could be said to be logically the only acceptable one. I hope this helps, but logical analysis of pronunciation, sometimes only muddies the waters. Feel free to copy the earliest English reference over to the article, if you think it useful. C4dn (talk) 02:14, 29 July 2011 (UTC)