Dictionary Definition
short adj
1 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" [ant: long]
2 primarily spatial sense; having little length
or lacking in length; "short skirts"; "short hair"; "the board was
a foot short"; "a short toss" [ant: long]
3 low in stature; not tall; "his was short and
stocky"; "short in stature"; "a short smokestack" [ant: tall]
4 not sufficient to meet a need; "an inadequate
income"; "a poor salary"; "money is short"; "on short rations";
"food is in short supply"; "short on experience" [syn: inadequate, poor]
5 not holding securities or commodities that one
sells in expectation of a fall in prices; "a short sale"; "short in
cotton" [ant: long]
6 of speech sounds (especially vowels) of
relatively short duration (as e.g. the English vowel sounds in
`pat', `pet', `pit', `pot', putt') [ant: long]
7 containing a large amount of shortening;
therefore tender and easy to crumble or break into flakes;
"shortbread is a short crumbly cookie"; "a short flaky pie
crust"
8 less than the correct or legal or full amount
often deliberately so; "a light pound"; "a scant cup of sugar";
"regularly gives short weight" [syn: light, scant(p)]
9 used of syllables that are unaccented or of
relatively brief duration
10 (of memory) deficient in retentiveness or
range; "a short memory"
11 lacking foresight or scope; "a short view of
the problem"; "shortsighted policies"; "shortsighted critics
derided the plan"; "myopic thinking" [syn: shortsighted, unforesightful, myopic]
12 unwilling to endure; "she was short with the
slower students" [syn: unforbearing]
13 quickly aroused to anger; "a hotheaded
commander" [syn: choleric, irascible, hotheaded, hot-tempered,
quick-tempered,
short-tempered]
14 most direct; "took the shortest and most
direct route to town" [syn: shortest]
15 marked by rude or peremptory shortness; "try
to cultivate a less brusque manner"; "a curt reply"; "the salesgirl
was very short with him" [syn: brusque, brusk, curt, short(p)]
Noun
1 the location on a baseball field where the
shortstop is stationed
2 accidental contact between two points in an
electric circuit that have a potential difference [syn: short
circuit]
3 the fielding position of the player on a
baseball team who is stationed between 2nd and 3rd base [syn:
shortstop] adv
2 without possessing something at the time it is
contractually sold; "he made his fortune by selling short just
before the crash"
3 clean across; "the car's axle snapped
short"
4 at some point or distance before a goal is
reached; "he fell short of our expectations"
5 so as to interrupt; "She took him up short
before he could continue"
6 at a disadvantage; "I was caught short" [syn:
unawares]
7 tightly; "she caught him up short on his
lapel"
8 in a curt, abrupt and discourteous manner; "he
told me curtly to get on with it"; "he talked short with everyone";
"he said shortly that he didn't like it" [syn: curtly, shortly]
Verb
1 cheat someone by not returning him enough money
[syn: short-change]
2 create a short-circuit in [syn: short-circuit]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
scortAdjective
en-adj er- Having a small distance from one end or edge to another, either horizontally or vertically.
- In the context of "of a person": Of comparatively little height.
- Having little duration.
- In the context of "followed by for": Of a word or phrase,
constituting an abbreviation (for another) or shortened form (of
another).
- “Phone” is short for “telephone”, and “PTO” is short for “please turn over”.
- cricket of a ball that bounced relatively far from the batsman
- relatively close to the batsman
- brittle (of pastry); see also shortening, shortcrust
Usage notes
- short is often used in the positive vertical dimension, but in the horizontal dimension, shallow and narrow are more commonly used.
Synonyms
- low, narrow, slim, shallow
- little, pint-sized, titchy italbrac slang
- sense having little duration brief, concise
- an abbreviation of, a short form of
Derived terms
rel-top terms derived from short- for short
- in short
- the long and the short of it
- short-arse
- short back and sides
- short-change, shortchange
- shorten
- shortie
- shortfall
- shorthand
- shorty
Translations
having a small distance between ends or edges
constituting an abbreviation (for)
of a person, of comparatively little height
having little duration
- French: court
- Italian: corto
- ttbc Arabic:
- Egyptian:
- ttbc Dutch: kort (1), korte (1), dicht (1), dichte (1)
- ttbc Esperanto: mallonga
- ttbc Hindi: छोटा (chotā)
- ttbc Indonesian: pendek
- ttbc Korean: 짧다 (jjapda)
- ttbc Kurdish: kurt, kin, qut, quse,
- ttbc Lithuanian: trumpas
- ttbc Malay: pendek
- ttbc Portuguese: curto
- ttbc Sanskrit: laghu
- ttbc Swedish: kort
- ttbc Telugu: పొట్టి (poTTi)
Adverb
en-adv er- of a cricket ball, to bounce relatively far from the batsman so that it bounces higher than normal; opposite of full
Noun
- A short circuit.
- shortstop
- Jones smashes a grounder between third and short.
Translations
a short circuit
- Japanese: 短絡, ショート
baseball: shortstop
- Japanese: ショート
Verb
- To cause a short circuit in (something).
- Of an electricial circuit, to short circuit.
- To shortchange.
- To provide with a smaller than agreed or labeled amount.
- This is the third time I've caught them shorting us.
- transitive business To sell something, especially securities, that one does not own in hopes of profiting from a decline in the price.
Translations
to cause a short circuit
- Danish: kortslutte
- French: court-circuiter
- German: kurzschließen
- Japanese: 短絡する
- Russian: закорачивать (zakoráčivat') , закоротить (zakorotít') ; замыкать (zamykát') , замкнуть (zamknút')
French
Pronunciation
- lang=fr|/ʃɔʁt/
- lang=fr|/SORt/
Noun
fr-noun m- shorts, short
trousers a UK
- Avec un pantalon, j'ai moins froid aux jambes qu'avec un short.
-
- “With trousers on, my legs are not as cold as with shorts on.”
Extensive Definition
Short may refer to:
- Short (surname)
- Holly Short, a fictional character from the Artemis Fowl series
- Short circuit, an accidental connection between two nodes of an electrical circuit
- Short (finance), stock-trading status
- Short film, a cinema format
- Short subject, a cinema format used almost interchangeably with short film
- Short integer, a computer datatype
- Short (cricket), an attribute among fielding position modifiers in cricket
- Short Brothers, a British aerospace company
- A person of below normal height, see dwarfism
See also
short in French: Court
short in Japanese: ショート
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
3-D, Bermuda shorts, Cinemascope, Cinerama, Spartan, Technicolor, Western, aback, abbreviate, abbreviated, abridged, abrupt, abruptly, adulterated, aggressive, all in all,
amount, amplify, animated cartoon, apart
from, aposiopestic,
arrested, badly off,
bankrupt in, bare of, barring, bear, bear account, bearish, beastly, before, bereft of,
black-and-white film, blemished, bluff, blunt, brash, break, break in on, brief, briefly, brisk, broken circuit, brusque, burden, butt in, callow, cartoon, cavalier, charge, chiller, chunky, churlish, cinema, circuit, circuital field,
clipped, close, close-tongued, closed
circuit, closemouthed, color film,
cometary, compact, compendious, complete
circuit, compressed,
concise, condensed, contracted, core, couchant, cramped, creepie, crisp, crouched, crusty, cursory, curt, curtail, curtailed, curtal, curtate, cut, cut off, cut short, damaged, dead circuit, debased, decreased, decurtate, defective, deficient, denuded of,
depressed, deprived
of, depthless,
destitute of, devoid of, diminished, diminutive, dinky, direct, discourteous, distressed, docked, documentary, documentary
film, down to bedrock, dumb, dumpy, dwarfish, economical of words,
educational film, electrify, elfin, elliptic, embarrassed, embryonic, empty of, energize, epigrammatic, erroneous, except for,
excepting, excluding, exclusive of,
exiguous, fail, failing, fallible, faulty, feature, feeling the pinch,
few, film, flashing, flat, fleet, flick, flicker, flickering, footling, for want of, forlorn
of, forthwith, found
wanting, galvanic circuit, galvanize, generate, gist, gnomic, gruff, half-pint, hard up,
harsh, hastily, horror picture, horse
opera, hot circuit, hot pants, hurriedly, hypoplastic, ill off,
immature, impaired, impecunious, imperfect, impolite, imprecise, impure, in Queer Street, in a
nutshell, in arrear, in arrears, in default, in default of, in
narrow circumstances, in reduced circumstances, in short, in short
supply, in straitened circumstances, in want of, inaccurate, inadequate, incomplete, inconsequential,
inconsiderable,
inconsiderate,
indisposed to talk, inexact, infant, inferior, insignificant, instantaneous, instantly, insufficient, interrupt, irascible, knee-high, knocked
flat, lacking, laconic, laid low, land-poor,
lateral circuit, leaving out, leg, lessened, limited, little, live circuit, loop, loop in, low, low-built, low-hung, low-level,
low-leveled, low-lying, low-set, low-statured, magnetic circuit,
makeshift, meager, meat, mediocre, meteoric, microcircuit, midget, miniature, minus, minuscule, missing, mixed, momentary, motion picture,
motion-picture show, movie, moving picture, multiple
circuit, multiple series, mum, mute, narrow, neap, needing, negligible, newsreel, no great shakes, not
perfect, nudie, off, offhand, on the edge, one-horse,
out of, out of pocket, part, partial, patchy, path, penniless, peremptorily, petite, petty, photodrama, photoplay, picayune, picayunish, picture, picture show, piddling, pinched, pindling, pint-sized, pith, pithy, plug in, pocket, pointed, poky, poor, poorly off, pornographic
film, precluding,
preview, printed
circuit, prone, pruned, puny, purport, quick, quiet, rare, recumbent, reduced, reserved, rough, runty, scant, scant of, scanty, scarce, scrappy, scrimpy, sententious, series
multiple, setting aside, severe, shallow, sharp, shock, short account, short and
sweet, short circuit, short interest, short of, short of funds,
short of money, short seller, short side, short-circuit,
short-lived, short-term, short-termed, shorten, shortened, shorts, shy, shy of, silent, silent film, sketchy, skimp, skimpy, skin flick, skin-deep,
slender, slight, small, smallish, snappish, sneak preview,
snippety, snippy, snug, spaghetti Western, sparing of
words, sparse, speechless, speedy, squat, squatty, squeezed, step down, step up,
stiffen, stint, stooped, stop, straight, straightforward,
straitened, strapped, stubby, stumpy, stunted, succinct, sudden, suddenly, summary, superficial, supine, surly, swift, switch off, switch on,
synopsized, synoptic, taciturn, talkie, talking picture, temporary, terminate, terse, testy, thick, thickset, thriller, thrust, tight, tight-lipped, tiny, to the point, tongue-tied,
trailer, transient, transitory, trifling, trim, trivial, truculent, truncated, turn off, turn on,
two-by-four, unanticipatedly,
unaware, unblessed with,
uncivil, underdeveloped,
underground film, undeveloped, unelevated, uneven, unexpectedly, unfinished, ungracious, unloquacious, unmoneyed, unperfected, unpossessed of,
unprosperous,
unreached, unsound, untalkative, unthorough, upshot, vector field,
vest-pocket, void of, wanting, wee, without warning, word-bound,
wordless