short
/ʃɔːt
/adjective
1Measuring a small distance from end to end: short dark hair a short flight of steps the bed was too short for him...
- The offender is described as a white man, 5ft 10 in tall, with short dark hair and of medium build.
- He had short dark hair, a small thin moustache and brown eyes.
- The suspect is a white man, 6ft tall, with stubble, short dark hair, and crooked white teeth.
Synonyms
small, little, tiny, minuscule
informal teeny, teeny-weeny
low, squat, stubby, miniature, dwarf;
Scottish wee
direct, straight
1.1(Of a journey) covering a small distance: the hotel is a short walk from the sea...
- This is not a problem on short journeys but on a long haul it can literally become a pain in the neck.
- Now hardly anybody works on Saturday mornings and cars and buses are freely available to make the short journey to Ibrox or Parkhead.
- I was put up at a villa that stood on stilts in the sea and which required a short journey by boat to reach from the main resort itself.
1.2(Of a garment or sleeves on a garment) only covering the top part of a person’s arms or legs: a short skirt...
- Wrapping her arms about her, Jenni cursed her choice of a skirt and short sleeves.
- Only now they were incongruously dressed in sheepskin jackets and short skirts.
- She was never associated with skimpy bathing suits, low cut gowns and short dresses.
1.3(Of a person) small in height: he is short and tubby...
- You have to imagine a tiny, thin, short fellow with a white beard and bald head.
- She's short and petite, with dimples in her smile and her hair in small little buns.
- She is short and petite in frame - a trait she inherited from her Japanese mother.
Synonyms
small, little, petite, tiny, squat, stocky, dumpy, stubby, elfin, dwarfish, diminutive, Lilliputian;
Scottish wee
informal pint-sized, teeny, teeny-weeny, pocket-sized, knee-high to a grasshopper
British informal fubsy
1.4(Of a ball in cricket, a shot in tennis, etc.) travelling only a small distance before bouncing: he uses his opportunities to attack every short ball...
- Bevan was said to have a weakness against the short ball and was restricted to playing limited overs cricket.
- I was putting away the short ball, hitting the forehands well and not missing anything on the backhand.
- Two of them came in Kirby's first over and both were dispatched to the boundary, along with a short ball which was pulled to the fence.
1.5 Cricket Denoting fielding positions relatively close to the batsman: short midwicket...
- However, McIntyre quickly took revenge to have the batsman caught at short mid-wicket by Love.
- The big-hitting Justin Kemp ran himself out on 18 as Boje did some fine fielding from short cover.
- I was fielding at short leg and had the best seat in the house.
2Lasting or taking a small amount of time: visiting London for a short break a short conversation...
- We'll continue our conversation with both of these senators after a short break.
- After a short conversation he left but the residents believe someone tampered with a back window while he was there.
- She was suspicious and, after a short conversation, told the man to leave.
Synonyms
brief, momentary, temporary, short-lived, impermanent, short-term, cursory, fleeting, passing, fugitive, flying, lightning, transitory, transient, ephemeral, evanescent, fading, quick, meteoric
rare fugacious
2.1 [attributive] Seeming to last less time than is the case; passing quickly: in 10 short years all this changed...
- I have seen far too many people give up too quickly on their programs after a few short weeks.
- The cake was a replica of the old school where Catherine taught for all those years and which closed only a few short months ago.
- I noticed how much has changed over these 10 short years, cinema prices, for instance.
2.2(Of a person’s memory) retaining things for only a small amount of time: he has a short memory for past misdeeds...
- Yet those who might write off the Commonwealth and European medallist have short memories.
- Investors, institutional and retail, have famously short memories.
- Only those who are blessed with short memories can believe that the history of ideas is a tale of progress.
2.3 Stock Market (Of stocks or other securities or commodities) sold in advance of being acquired, with reliance on the price falling so that a profit can be made.The effect was to throw prices and expectations into chaos when stocks were short....
- Speculators have no firm commitment to the long or the short side of the market.
2.4 Stock Market (Of a broker, position in the market, etc.) buying or based on short stocks or other securities or commodities.Take short positions with caution until the market reverts back to bull confirmed....
- Unlike other investors, he can establish either long or short positions in securities.
- Shorters or short sellers are traders who sell shares that they don't already own.
2.5Denoting or having a relatively early date for the maturing of a bill of exchange.It is unusual because of the falling interest rate environment during most of the period, at least for short bonds, followed by a leveling off and slight rise in the last few months.
3Relatively small in extent: a short speech he wrote a short book...
- Plan to write a relatively short novel; you are producing one book, not a library.
- One of the key issues to be considered in this short introduction is the extent to which this is true.
- The third book is longer than the first two, but is relatively short.
Synonyms
concise, brief, succinct, to the point, compact, terse, curt, summary, economical, crisp, short and sweet, pithy, epigrammatic, laconic, pointed, thumbnail, abridged, abbreviated, condensed, synoptic, compendious, summarized, contracted, curtailed, truncated
3.1 (short of/on) Not having enough of (something); lacking or deficient in: they were very short of provisions I know you’re short on cash...
- We have not gotten off that, which is why we're short on equipment and personnel and training.
- They were short on information, but all said Deane had resigned from the OPP.
- If you're short on time and desperately in need of a one-stop option for all of your green needs, you're in luck.
Synonyms
deficient in, lacking (in), wanting (in), in need of, low on, short on, missing, with an insufficiency of, with too few/little …
informal strapped for, pushed for, minus
3.2 [predicative] In insufficient supply: food is short...
- Six days after Tropical Storm Jeanne hit the island, water and food supplies are short.
- The co-operative's arable manager, Phil Rees, warned that supplies could be very short next spring.
- He added that there is a short supply of trained diabeticians.
Synonyms
scarce, in short supply, scant, scanty, meagre, sparse, hard to find, hard to come by, not enough, too little, insufficient, deficient, inadequate, lacking, wanting;
at a premium, like gold dust, not to be had, scarcer than hen's teeth;
paltry, negligible, thin
informal not to be had for love nor money
rare exiguous
4 Phonetics (Of a vowel) categorized as short with regard to quality and length (e.g. in standard British English the vowel ʊ in good is short as distinct from the long vowel uː in food).Maybe it's all part of a plan to nullify the threat from the land of the short sharp vowel....
- There are other vowel sounds in our language besides the short and long vowels.
4.1 Prosody (Of a vowel or syllable) having the lesser of the two recognized durations.Many local accents are marked by a rhythm that tends to lengthen stressed vowels and to reduce or eliminate unstressed short vowels....
- It can occur in syllable coda position, but only after a short vowel.
- A trochee is a metrical foot of two syllables, the first long and the second short.
5 [predicative] (Of a person) terse; uncivil: he was often sharp and rather short with her...
- He was short with the press, which did not endear him when it came to the races with Coe.
- British Transport Police are being very short with their version of events.
- I don't know what I have done to upset him but I must have done something as Gareth has been very short with me of late.
Synonyms
curt, sharp, abrupt, blunt, brusque, terse, offhand, gruff, ungracious, graceless, surly, snappy, testy, tart, rude, discourteous, uncivil, impolite, ill-mannered, bad-mannered
6(Of odds or a chance) reflecting or representing a high level of probability: they have been backed at short odds to win thousands of pounds...
- Otherwise Mark Read will be offering very short odds indeed on NT Labor being a one term government.
- George has very short odds to be evicted from Celebrity Big Brother, but he's providing us with too much fun for him to go just yet.
- Scotland's top trainer over the jumps is short odds to achieve his aim despite the attentions of the handicapper.
7(Of pastry) containing a high proportion of fat to flour and therefore crumbly.The easiest way to do this with very short pastry is wrap it lightly around the rolling pin, lift the pastry up on the rolling pin, and lay it on top of the fruit....
- The short pastry is good and the sauce emulsified, but filling is bland invalid food and the ham is elusive.
- This had thin, short pastry nicely dusted with icing sugar and was delicious.
Synonyms
crumbly, crispy, crisp, brittle, friable;
shortcrust;
fatty
7.1(Of clay) having poor plasticity.A short clay will not bend well and tends to break instead of forming when bent.
adverb
1(Chiefly in sport) at, to, or over a relatively small distance: you go deep and you go short...
- This allows a wider variety of attacking options, with an aerial or passing game, long or short all possible.
- He has to mix playing the ball long and short, and is playing it long too often.
- Flintoff spotted Ganguly charging down the pitch and dropped it short only for the batsman to carve the ball deep into the crowd.
1.1Not as far as the point aimed at; not far enough: all too often you pitch the ball short...
- He does tend to hit a lot of balls short, which allowed me to move up in the court and attack.
- Instead, we end up making an ugly pass at the ball and almost always leave it two or three feet short.
- Today, they are playing away from the body when the ball is pitched short.
noun
1British A drink of spirits served in a small measure.Nicholas said he had drunk about six shorts and other alcohol and had taken heroin in the hours leading up to the encounter....
- She had drunk a litre of cider and three shorts of vodka and had taken too high a dose of her prescribed medicine.
- There is a fan nearby which fills one ear with white noise and makes me slightly giddy as if I had drunk a short.
2A short film as opposed to a feature film.Arteta made several well-received shorts and the feature film Star Maps, about a would-be movie star who makes a living selling Hollywood maps - and sex....
- It means feature films, not shorts; fiction not documentary.
- The Raindance festival commences on October 23 and will include 70 feature films and 200 shorts from 22 countries.
3A short sound such as a short signal in Morse code or a short vowel or syllable: her call was two longs and a short...
- To reach Phillip W Steele's grandparents on Gilliland farm, the caller would have to ring two longs and a short on a wooden box on the wall.
4A short circuit.The transformer laminations or coating of shellac, enamel or varnish is to insulate adjacent turns from shorts between winding....
- An internal short can cause the battery cells to overheat, posing a fire hazard to consumers.
5 Stock Market A person who sells short.During a downtrend, shorts are selling aggressively while the only participants that are buying are bottom pickers....
- The shorts are also alarmed by corporate insider selling at Stericycle.
- If you conclude the shorts have a good case, sell or lighten up.
5.1 (shorts) Stock Market Short-dated stocks.He's right too about the Commercials putting out more shorts on a price rise....
- A bullish divergence issues a signal to cover your shorts and prepare to enter into a long position.
6 (shorts) A mixture of bran and coarse flour.The diets contained shorts, bran, or flour alone or in combination.
verb
1Short-circuit or cause to short-circuit: [no object]: the electrical circuit had shorted out [with object]: if the contact terminals are shorted, the battery quickly overheats...
- If you did not do anything with the flyback, gradually the internal capacitance will become shorted and you will need to refurbish the flyback.
- Only by using a ringer test you will know if it shorted or not.
- It sort of reminded me of when you see powerlines shorting out, or see a lot of sort of slow sparks leaping out from this central point.
2 [with object] Stock Market Sell (stocks or other securities or commodities) in advance of acquiring them, with the aim of making a profit when the price falls: the rule prevents sellers from shorting a stock unless the last trade resulted in a price increase...
- Take our investors, for example, who made money shorting financials over the last year.
- Some 1.6 million shares, 10 % of shares outstanding, have been shorted.
- Almost time to short the faster-moving currencies, I think.
Phrases
be caught (or taken) short
a brick short of a load (or two sandwiches short of a picnic, etc.)
bring (or pull) someone up short
come short
for short
get (or have) someone by the short and curlies (or short hairs)
go short
in short
in short order
in the short run (or term)
little (or nothing) short of
make short work of
sell short
sell someone/thing short
short and sweet
the short end of the stick
short for
short of
short of breath
short, sharp shock
stop short
stop short of
Derivatives
shortish
- I think she would look amazing in a white leather shortish dress with beading.
- You're getting close to a good mix of two broad streams: shortish, formless, off-the-cuff opinion pieces; and formal, well-argued pieces, both long and short.
- Playing With Time is tremendous fun: a collection of shortish Quicktime movies of time-lapse and high-speed photography.
Origin
Old English sceort, of Germanic origin; related to shirt and skirt.
shirt from Old English:
The garments shirt and skirt (Middle English) share an ancient root, which is also that of short, the basic sense probably being ‘short garment’. The idea behind shirty (mid 19th century), ‘bad-tempered or annoyed’, is the same as that behind keep your shirt on, ‘don't lose your temper, stay calm’. The offended or riled person is about to take his shirt off ready for a fight. In lose your shirt or put your shirt on the shirt is seen as the very last possession that you could use to bet with.