abbreviate

Other forms of abbreviate

past tense

abbreviated·

present participle

abbreviating·

third person

abbreviates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about abbreviate

What does abbreviate mean?

abbreviate means "reduce in scope while retaining essential elements". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in abbreviate?

abbreviate has 4 syllables: ab-bre-vi-ate. The stress falls on "bre". In IPA it is /əˈbɹiviˌeɪt/.

What is another word for abbreviate?

Close synonyms include abridge, foreshorten, shorten, cut, contract. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is abbreviate a common word?

abbreviate is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with abbreviate?

95 words rhyme with abbreviate. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.