Loading page
say it: shawrt
short is an adjective, adverb, noun and verb meaning "primarily temporal sense; indicating or being or seeming to be limited in duration". It carries 23 recorded senses.
primarily temporal sense; indicating or being or seeming to be limited in duration
“a short life”
“a short flight”
“a short holiday”
“a short story”
“only a few short months”
(primarily spatial sense) having little length or lacking in length
“short skirts”
“short hair”
“the board was a foot short”
“a short toss”
low in stature; not tall
“he was short and stocky”
“short in stature”
“a short smokestack”
“a little man”
of insufficient quantity to meet a need
“an inadequate income”
“a poor salary”
“money is short”
“on short rations”
“food is in short supply”
“short on experience”
“the jejune diets of the very poor”
not holding securities or commodities that one sells in expectation of a fall in prices
“a short sale”
“short in cotton”
finance
of speech sounds or syllables of relatively short duration
“the English vowel sounds in `pat', `pet', `pit', `pot', putt' are short”
phonetics
less than the correct or legal or full amount often deliberately so
“a light pound”
“a scant cup of sugar”
“regularly gives short weight”
lacking foresight or scope
“a short view of the problem”
“shortsighted policies”
“shortsighted critics derided the plan”
“myopic thinking”
tending to crumble or break into flakes due to a large amount of shortening
“shortbread is a short crumbly cookie”
“a short flaky pie crust”
marked by rude or peremptory shortness
“try to cultivate a less brusque manner”
“a curt reply”
“the salesgirl was very short with him”
without possessing something at the time it is contractually sold
“he made his fortune by selling short just before the crash”
finance
clean across
“the car's axle snapped short”
at some point or distance before a goal is reached
“he fell short of our expectations”
so as to interrupt
“She took him up short before he could continue”
the location on a baseball field where the shortstop is stationed
accidental contact between two points in an electric circuit that have a potential difference
the fielding position of the player on a baseball team who is stationed between second and third base
cheat someone by not returning him enough money
create a short circuit in
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.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for short come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.