short
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: shôrt
ipa: /ʃɔːt/
ipa: /ʃoɹt/
note: St. Louis
ipa: [ʃɑɹt]
ipa: /ˈʃoːrt/
ipa: /ˈʃoːɻt/
ipa: /ʃoːt/
rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)t
note: rhotic
ipa: /ʃɔɹt/
note: non-rhotic
ipa: /ʃɔːt/
note: Dublin, without the horse–hoarse merger
ipa: /ˈʃɒːɹt/
Forms: form: shorts
Etymology: From Middle English schort, short, from Old English sċeort, sċort (“short”), from Proto-West Germanic *skurt, from Proto-Germanic *skurtaz (“short”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker-. Doublet of curt.
Cognates
Cognate with shirt, skirt, curt, Scots short, schort (“short”), French court, Dutch kort, German kurz, Old High German scurz (“short”) (whence Middle High German schurz), Old Norse skorta (“to lack”) (whence Danish skorte), Albanian shkurt (“short, brief”), Latin curtus (“shortened, incomplete”) and Proto-Slavic *kortъkъ. Doublet of curt. More at shirt.
Senses: examples: text: The circuit breaker keeps tripping because there's a short in the wiring.
glosses: A short circuit.
examples: text: Preceded by a Simpsons short shot in 3-D—perhaps the only thing more superfluous than a fourth Ice Age movie—Ice Age: Continental Drift finds a retinue of vaguely contemporaneous animals coping with life in the post-Pangaea age.
ref: 2012 July 12, Sam Adams, AV Club, Ice Age: Continental Drift:
glosses: A short film.
glosses: A short film.
A short-form vertical video.
glosses: A short film.
A short-form vertical video.
A YouTube video that is less than one minute long.
examples: text: 38 short suits fit me right off the rack.
text: Do you have that size in a short?
glosses: A short version of a garment in a particular size.
examples: text: Jones smashes a grounder between third and short.
topics: ball-games
baseball
games
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: A shortstop.
examples: text: The market decline was terrible, but the shorts were buying champagne.
topics: business
finance
glosses: A short seller.
examples: text: He closed out his short at a modest loss after three months.
text: The company’s stock is one of the largest shorts in the market, meaning many investors are betting it could fall even farther.
ref: 2025 August 25, Julie Creswell, “Krispy Kreme Bets on Big-Box Stores to Stay Fresh”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:
topics: business
finance
glosses: A short sale or short position.
examples: text: For the short and the long is, our play is preferred.
ref: c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:
glosses: A summary account.
examples: text: If we compare the nearest conventional shorts and longs in English, as in ‘bit’ and ‘beat’, ‘not’ and ‘naught’, we find that the short vowels are generally wide (i, ɔ), the long narrow (i, ɔ), besides being generally diphthongic as well.
ref: 1877, Henry Sweet, A Handbook of Phonetics, page 18:
topics: human-sciences
linguistics
phonetics
phonology
sciences
glosses: A short sound, syllable, or vowel.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
programming
sciences
glosses: An integer variable having a smaller range than normal integers; usually two bytes long.
examples: text: For example, one addict would crack shorts (break and enter cars) and usually obtain just enough stolen goods to buy stuff and get off just before getting sick.
ref: 1975, Mary Sanches, Ben G. Blount, Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use, page 47:
text: […] list of all crimes reported by these 61 daily criminals during their years on the street is: theft (this includes shoplifting; "cracking shorts", burglary and other forms of stealing), dealing, forgery, gambling, confidence games (flim-flam, etc.) […]
ref: 1982, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice, Career Criminal Life Sentence Act of 1981: Hearings, page 87:
glosses: An automobile; especially in crack shorts (“to break into automobiles”).
Related terms: shorts