Named for its tiny steps — the minuet ruled European ballrooms for 150 years before Beethoven replaced it with the scherzo.
A slow, stately ballroom dance in triple time, popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, or music composed for such a dance.
From French menuet, from menu meaning small, delicate, from Latin minutus meaning small, referring to the small steps of the dance Key roots: minutus (Latin: "small").
The minuet was so essential to 18th-century social life that it was the first dance at every formal ball — and a person's minuet was judged as carefully as their conversation. Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven all used the minuet as a movement in symphonies, but Beethoven eventually replaced it with the faster scherzo, effectively ending the minuet's 150-year reign.