Shorten
['ʃɔːt(ə)n] or ['ʃɔrtn]
Definition
(verb.) become short or shorter; 'In winter, the days shorten'.
(verb.) make shorter than originally intended; reduce or retrench in length or duration; 'He shortened his trip due to illness'.
(verb.) make short or shorter; 'shorten the skirt'; 'shorten the rope by a few inches'.
Typist: Maura--From WordNet
Definition
(a.) To make short or shorter in measure, extent, or time; as, to shorten distance; to shorten a road; to shorten days of calamity.
(a.) To reduce or diminish in amount, quantity, or extent; to lessen; to abridge; to curtail; to contract; as, to shorten work, an allowance of food, etc.
(a.) To make deficient (as to); to deprive; -- with of.
(a.) To make short or friable, as pastry, with butter, lard, pot liquor, or the like.
(v. i.) To become short or shorter; as, the day shortens in northern latitudes from June to December; a metallic rod shortens by cold.
Checked by Jocelyn
Synonyms and Synonymous
v. a. [1]. Abbreviate, abridge, retrench, cut short, cut down.[2]. Lessen, diminish, reduce.
Edited by Lelia
Synonyms and Antonyms
SYN:Curtail, lessen, abridge,[See {[?]?}]
Checked by Barry
Examples
- I come to a question that may shorten the business. Charles Dickens. Hard Times.
- I think I may shorten the subject. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
- This wound will probably shorten my life, having shattered a frame, weak of itself. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- Lydgate did not mention to the Vicar another reason he had for wishing to shorten the period of courtship. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- You will not allow this base newspaper slander to shorten your stay here, Mr. Winkle? Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers.
- They are sudden discoveries which for the most part simply shorten his journey. William Henry Doolittle. Inventions in the Century.
- Holding the end of a skate-strap for another lad to shorten with an axe, he lost the top of a finger. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
- I would rather bear tediousness, dear, than have time made short by such means as have shortened mine. Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native.
- After a silence of some minutes she observed-- With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life was shortened by trouble. Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.
- When the colour is absent from only one of the two upper petals, the nectary is not quite aborted but is much shortened. Charles Darwin. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
- I do not think, he said, that the way could have been shortened. Plato. The Republic.
- About the same time the look-out on the Arrow must have discerned it, for in a few minutes Tarzan saw the sails being shifted and shortened. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan of the Apes.
- Its aspect was altered since the days had shortened and the weather had grown cold. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White.
- Although it cost $33,000,000 and required seven years for completion, the labor-saving cableways greatly cheapened its cost and shortened the time of its construction. Edward W. Byrn. The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
- It is useful for the making of chains, tools, carriage axles, joining shafting, wires, and pipes, mending bands, tires, hoops, and lengthening and shortening bolts, bars, etc. Edward W. Byrn. The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century.
- Yet she had not to complain of an undue shortening of existence; her faded person shewed that life had naturally spent itself. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- I thought you were going to tell your speech to that man, said Jo, rudely shortening her sister's little reverie. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women.
- Still he looked both handsome and superb; but time was shortening and there was only one direction to go. Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom The Bell Tolls.
- Proportions, fore-shortening. Jane Austen. Emma.
- In the trombone, valves are replaced by a section which slides in and out and shortens or lengthens the tube. Bertha M. Clark. General Science.
Edited by Flo