mince

From Middle English mincen, minsen, itself a blend: partly from Old English minsian, meaning 'to make less or smaller,' and partly from Old French mincier, 'to cut into small pieces,' which came from mince, 'slender, slight.' Both branches trace back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'small, little.'

The word carried a double sense of diminishing from the start — one strand about making things smaller in size or degree, the other specifically about chopping things into small pieces — and English fused these into a single word covering both literal cutting and figurative softening.

It's cognate with Swedish minska, 'to reduce or lessen,' and with the English word min, which shares the same deep root meaning 'small.'