Minuet

[2] The minuet was traditionally said to have descended from the bransle de Poitou, though there is no evidence making a clear connection between these two dances.

The earliest treatise to mention the possible connection of the name to the expression pas menus is Gottfried Taubert's Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister, published in Leipzig in 1717, but this source does not describe the steps as being particularly small or dainty.

[1] Stylistically refined minuets, apart from the social dance context, were introduced—to opera at first—by Jean-Baptiste Lully, who included no fewer than 92 of them in his theatrical works[2] and in the late 17th century the minuet was adopted into the suite, such as some of the suites of Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel.

[6] Initially, before its adoption in contexts other than social dance, the minuet was usually in binary form, with two repeated sections of usually eight bars each.

The minuet and trio eventually became the standard third movement in the four-movement classical symphony, Johann Stamitz being the first to employ it thus with regularity.