minimum vs the smallest amount of

minimum

noun
  • The smallest amount. 

  • He always tries to get away with doing the minimum. 

  • The lowest limit. 

  • A period of minimum brightness or energy intensity (of a star). 

  • The smallest member of a batch or sample or the lower bound of a probability distribution. 

  • A lower bound of a set which is also an element of that set. 

adj
  • To the lowest degree. 

the smallest amount of

How often have the words minimum and the smallest amount of occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )