shorten.
To make shorter; to abbreviate.
Meaning & usage
To make shorter; to abbreviate.
To become shorter.
To make deficient (as to); to deprive (of).
To make short or friable, as pastry, with butter, lard, etc.
To reduce or diminish in amount, quantity, or extent; to lessen.
to shorten an allowance of food
To make crumbly.
To take in the slack of (a rope).
To reduce (sail) by taking it in.
to dress (a baby) in a short (rather than long) gown
Where this word comes from
From Middle English shortnen, schortenen, equivalent to short + -en (verbal suffix). In some senses, a continuation (in altered form) of Middle English schorten (“to make short, shorten”), from Old English sċortian (“to become short”), from Proto-Germanic *skurtōną (“to shorten”).
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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.