Definitions for: Short


[n] the fielding position of the player on a baseball team who is stationed between 2nd and 3rd base
[n] the location on a baseball field where the shortstop is stationed
[n] accidental contact between two points in an electric circuit that have a potential difference
[adv] quickly and without warning; "he stopped suddenly"
[adv] tightly; "she caught him up short on his lapel"
[adv] at a disadvantage; "I was caught short"
[adv] so as to interrupt; "She took him up short before he could continue"
[adv] at some point or distance before a goal is reached; "he fell short of our expectations"
[adv] clean across; "the car's axle snapped short"
[adv] (finance) without possessing something at the time it is contractually sold; "he made his fortune by selling short just before the crash"
[adv] 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"
[adj] most direct; "took the shortest and most direct route to town"
[adj] quickly aroused to anger; "a hotheaded commander"
[adj] primarily spatial sense; having little length or lacking in length; "short skirts"; "short hair"; "the board was a foot short"; "a short toss"
[adj] 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"
[adj] (phonetics) of speech sounds (especially vowels) of relatively short duration (as e.g. the English vowel sounds in `pat', `pet', `pit', `pot', putt')
[adj] (finance) not holding securities or commodities that one sells in expectation of a fall in prices; "a short sale"; "short in cotton"
[adj] unwilling to endure; "she was short with the slower students"
[adj] lacking foresight or scope; "a short view of the problem"; "shortsighted policies"; "shortsighted critics derided the plan"; "myopic thinking"
[adj] (of memory) deficient in retentiveness or range; "a short memory"
[adj] (prosody) used of syllables that are unaccented or of relatively brief duration
[adj] 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"
[adj] less than the correct or legal or full amount often deliberately so; "a light pound"; "a scant cup of sugar"; "regularly gives short weight"
[adj] low in stature; not tall; "his was short and stocky"; "short in stature"; "a short smokestack"
[adj] 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"
[v] create a short-circuit in
[v] cheat someone by not returning him enough money



Webster (1913) Definition: Short, a. [Compar. Shorter; superl. Shortest.] [OE.
short, schort, AS. scort, sceort; akin to OHG. scurz, Icel.
skorta to be short of, to lack, and perhaps to E. shear, v.
t. Cf. Shirt.]
1. Not long; having brief length or linear extension; as, a
short distance; a short piece of timber; a short flight.

The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch
himself on it. --Isa. xxviii.
20.

2. Not extended in time; having very limited duration; not
protracted; as, short breath.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.
--Chaucer.

To short absense I could yield. --Milton.

3. Limited in quantity; inadequate; insufficient; scanty; as,
a short supply of provisions, or of water.

4. Insufficiently provided; inadequately supplied; scantily
furnished; lacking; not coming up to a resonable, or the
ordinary, standard; -- usually with of; as, to be short of
money.

We shall be short in our provision. --Shak.

5. Deficient; defective; imperfect; not coming up, as to a
measure or standard; as, an account which is short of the
trith.

6. Not distant in time; near at hand.

Marinell was sore offended That his departure thence
should be so short. --Spenser.

He commanded those who were appointed to attend him
to be ready by a short day. --Clarendon.

7. Limited in intellectual power or grasp; not comprehensive;
narrow; not tenacious, as memory.

Their own short understandings reach No farther than
the present. --Rowe.

8. Less important, efficaceous, or powerful; not equal or
equivalent; less (than); -- with of.

Hardly anything short of an invasion could rouse
them again to war. --Landor.

9. Abrupt; brief; pointed; petulant; as, he gave a short
answer to the question.

10. (Cookery) Breaking or crumbling readily in the mouth;
crisp; as, short pastry.

11. (Metal) Brittle.

Note: Metals that are brittle when hot are called ?ot-short;
as, cast iron may be hot-short, owing to the presence
of sulphur. Those that are brittle when cold are called
cold-short; as, cast iron may be cold-short, on account
of the presence of phosphorus.

12. (Stock Exchange) Engaging or engaged to deliver what is
not possessed; as, short contracts; to be short of stock.
See The shorts, under Short, n., and To sell short,
under Short, adv.

Note: In mercantile transactions, a note or bill is sometimes
made payable at short sight, that is, in a little time
after being presented to the payer.

13. (Phon.) Not prolonged, or relatively less prolonged, in
utterance; -- opposed to long, and applied to vowels or
to syllables. In English, the long and short of the same
letter are not, in most cases, the long and short of the
same sound; thus, the i in ill is the short sound, not of
i in isle, but of ee in eel, and the e in pet is the
short sound of a in pate, etc. See Quantity, and Guide
to Pronunciation, [sect][sect]22, 30.

Note: Short is much used with participles to form numerous
self-explaining compounds; as, short-armed,
short-billed, short-fingered, short-haired,
short-necked, short-sleeved, short-tailed,
short-winged, short-wooled, etc.

At short notice, in a brief time; promptly.

Short rib (Anat.), one of the false ribs.

Short suit (Whist), any suit having only three cards, or
less than three. --R. A. Proctor.

To come short, To cut short, To fall short, etc. See
under Come, Cut, etc.


Short, n.
1. A summary account.

The short and the long is, our play is preferred.
--Shak.

2. pl. The part of milled grain sifted out which is next
finer than the bran.

The first remove above bran is shorts. --Halliwell.

3. pl. Short, inferior hemp.

4. pl. Breeches; shortclothes. [Slang] --Dickens.

5. (Phonetics) A short sound, syllable, or vowel.

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, the long narrow, besides
being generally diphthongic as well. Hence,
originally short vowels can be lengthened and yet
kept quite distinct from the original longs. --H.
Sweet.

In short, in few words; in brief; briefly.

The long and the short, the whole; a brief summing up.

The shorts (Stock Exchange), those who are unsupplied with
stocks which they contracted to deliver.


Short, adv.
In a short manner; briefly; limitedly; abruptly; quickly; as,
to stop short in one's course; to turn short.

He was taken up very short, and adjudged corrigible for
such presumptuous language. --Howell.

To sell short (Stock Exchange), to sell, for future
delivery, what the party selling does not own, but hopes
to buy at a lower rate.


Short, v. t. [AS. sceortian.]
To shorten. [Obs.]


Short, v. i.
To fail; to decrease. [Obs.]

Synonyms: abbreviated, abruptly, brief, choleric, chunky, clipped, close, curtal, curtly, dead, deficient, direct, dumpy, fleeting, forgetful, fugitive, half-length, hotheaded, hot-tempered, ill-natured, impatient, improvident, inadequate, insufficient, irascible, light, little, low-set, momentaneous, momentary, myopic, pint-size, pint-sized, poor, quick-tempered, runty, sawed-off, sawn-off, scant(p), short and sweet(p), short circuit, short-change, short-circuit, short-dated, shortened, shortest, shortish, shortly, short-range, short-run, shortsighted, short-snouted, shortstop, short-tempered, short-term, snub, squab, squabby, squat, squatty, stubby, stumpy, suddenly, telescoped, tender, truncate, truncated, unaccented, unawares, unforbearing, unforesightful, unretentive, unstressed

Antonyms: long, tall

See Also: baseball diamond, baseball team, bunco, circuit, con, contact, create, defraud, diamond, diddle, electric circuit, electrical circuit, goldbrick, gyp, infield, low, make, mulct, nobble, parcel, parcel of land, piece of ground, piece of land, position, rook, scam, small, swindle, tangency, tract, victimize

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