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abbreviation.

The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment.

12 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/əˌbɹiː.viˈeɪ.ʃən/Received-Pronunciation/əˌbɹi.viˈeɪ.ʃn̩/General-American
  1. The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment.

    countable · uncountable
  2. A shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase used to represent the whole, using omission of letters, and sometimes substitution of letters, or duplication of initial letters to signify plurality, including signs such as +, =, @.

    countable · uncountable
    Hants is an abbreviation of Hampshire.
  3. The process of abbreviating.

    countable · uncountable
  4. A notation used in music score to denote a direction, as pp or mf.

    countable · uncountable
  5. One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, or hemidemisemiquavers.

    countable · uncountable
  6. Any convenient short form used as a substitution for an understood or inferred whole.

    countable · uncountable
  7. Loss during evolution of the final stages of the ancestral ontogenetic pattern.

    countable · uncountable
  8. Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

First attested 1400–50. From Middle English abbreviacioun, from Middle French abreviation, from Ecclesiastical Latin abbreviātiō, from Latin ad + breviō (“shorten”), from brevis (“short”). By surface analysis, abbreviate + -ion.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.