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abort.

An early termination of a mission, action, or procedure in relation to missiles or spacecraft; the craft making such a mission.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/əˈbɔːt/Received-Pronunciation/əˈbɔɹt/US
  1. An early termination of a mission, action, or procedure in relation to missiles or spacecraft; the craft making such a mission.

    We've had aborts on three of our last seven launches.
  2. The function used to abort a process.

  3. An event in which a process is aborted.

    We've had three aborts over the last two days.
  4. The product of a miscarriage; an aborted offspring; an abortion.

    archaic
  5. A miscarriage; an untimely birth; an abortion.

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

From Middle English, from Latin abortus, perfect active participle of aborior (“miscarry”), formed from ab + orior (“to come into being”). Doublet of abortus.

verb/əˈbɔːt/Received-Pronunciation/əˈbɔɹt/US
  1. To miscarry; to bring forth (non-living) offspring prematurely.

    intransitive · regional
  2. To cause a premature termination of (a fetus); to end a pregnancy before term.

    intransitive · transitive
  3. To end prematurely; to stop in the preliminary stages; to turn back.

    transitive
  4. To stop or fail at something in the preliminary stages.

    intransitive
  5. To become checked in normal development, so as either to remain rudimentary or shrink away wholly; to cease organic growth before maturation; to become sterile.

    intransitive
  6. To cause an organism to develop minimally; to cause rudimentary development to happen; to prevent maturation.

    transitive
  7. To abandon a mission at any point after the beginning of the mission and prior to its completion.

    intransitive
  8. To terminate a mission involving a missile or rocket; to destroy a missile or rocket prematurely.

    transitive
  9. To terminate a process prior to completion.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Latin abortare, from abortus, from aboriri (“miscarry”), from ab- (“not”) + oriri (“come into being, arise, appear”).

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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.