A form of texture filtering. Prove me wrong, but I think the Latin phrase it comes from is "Multi In Parvum" which means roughly "many parts." When viewing a distant texture-mapped object in RT3D, many texels make up each pixel seen on the screen. The most common texture filtering technique is called point sampling, which often causes the textures to appear aliased or distorted. Mip-mapping solves that problem by creating ahead of time several different detail levels for each texture, called MIP-maps. It then accesses the appropriate level according to the object's distance from the camera. For example, for a texture image which is 16x16 texels, an engine that uses MIP mapping will create three more MIP-maps at lower resolutions, 8x8, 4x4, 2x2. There are two main methods of MIP mapping: bilinear filtering and trilinear filtering. If your engine supports MIP mapping, you should be careful with your mapping coordinates and tiling.

This definition is in context to Real Time 3D. See more contextual defintions for MIP Mapping.