Minor - Definition and Overview

The term minor (from Latin "smaller, lesser") has several meanings:

• Minor is a legal term for a young person, see Minor (law). Hence a younger brother or sister in British public school slang. The opposite is Major.
• In academia, a minor is a secondary focus of a Bachelor's degree; the primary focus is a major.
• In mathematics:
  • a minor of a square matrix is the determinant of a certain smaller matrix, see Minor (linear algebra)
  • a minor of a graph is a certain smaller graph, see Minor (graph theory)
• Minor is a scale, chord, or interval in music, see Minor scale, minor chord, minor third, minor sixth, relative minor/major, parallel minor/major. As opposed to major.