Short (pronounced shawrt)
(1) Having
little length; not long.
(2) Of
a person, of comparatively small stature; having little height; not tall
(applied by extension to just about everything (furniture, buildings, animals
et al)).
(3) Extending
or reaching only a little way; having a small distance from one end or edge to
another, either horizontally or vertically.
(4) Brief
in duration; not extensive in time.
(5) Brief
or concise, of limited duration.
(6) Rudely
brief; abrupt; brusque.
(7) Low
in amount; scanty.
(8) Not
reaching a point, mark, target, or the like; not long enough or far enough.
(9) Below
the standard in extent, quantity, duration, etc.
(10)
Being of an insufficient amount; below the desired level.
(11) Of
pastry, crisp and flaky; breaking or crumbling readily from being made with a
large proportion of butter or other shortening.
(12) Of
dough, containing a relatively large amount of shortening.
(13) Of
metals, deficient in tenacity; friable; brittle.
(14) In
physiology, of the head or skull, of less than ordinary length from front to
back.
(15) In
markets, not possessing at the time of sale commodities or stocks that one
sells and therefore compelled to make a purchase before the delivery date.
(16) In
markets, noting or pertaining to a sale of commodities or stocks that the
seller does not possess, depending for profit on a decline in prices.
(17) In
markets, as short selling, a mechanism for gambling that the future price of a
stock or other security will fall.
(18) In
phonetics, a sound lasting a relatively short time; denoting a vowel of
relatively brief temporal duration (in popular usage denoting the qualities of
the five English vowels represented orthographically in the words pat, pet,
pit, pot, put, and putt)
(19) In
prosody, of a syllable in quantitative verse, lasting a relatively shorter time
than a long syllable.
(20) Of
an alcoholic drink, a small measure (sometimes known as a shot); also used in
certain UK circles to describe whisky served undiluted (straight).
(21) In
ceramics, of clay, not sufficiently plastic enough to be modeled.
(22) In
rope-making, hard fibre.
(23) In
baseball, holding the bat with hands higher on the handle of the bat than the usual
grip; a fielder standing in a fielding position closer to the home plate than in
an orthodox setting (often called the short-stop).
(24) In
tailoring, a description for cuts for those who are shorter; a garment, as a
suit or overcoat, in such a size.
(25) In
clothing, trousers, knee-length or shorter; short pants worn by men as an undergarment,
usually as an alternative to closely-fitted underpants; knee breeches, formerly
worn by men but now rare except in certain equestrian pursuits.
(26) In
finance, bonds with a short duration until maturity.
(27) In
mining, crushed ore failing to pass through a given screen, thus being of a
larger given size than a specific grade; remnants, discards, or refuse of
various cutting and manufacturing processes.
(28) In
army jargon, of artillery, a shot that strikes or bursts short of the target
(also admiralty jargon for the same concept).
(29) In
electricity, as short circuit, the usually unintentional connection of low
resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging
current flows in it.
(30) In
gambling, in the jargon of betting odds, almost even.
(31) In
film-making, a production of deliberately brief duration.
(32) A
truncated form of a word or phrase.
(33) In
cricket, as a modifier, describing a fielding position closer to the pitch than
the (nominally) standard placement (eg short third man as opposed to third
man); a ball bowled so that it bounces relatively far from the batsman; a “run”
disallowed by the umpire because a batter failed to touch the designated line on
the pitch.
(34) In
(physical) money handling, providing a total amount in cash using the fewest
possible notes, ie using those of the largest denominations (mostly archaic).
(35) In
computer programming, an integer variable having a smaller range than normal
integers; usually two bytes in length.
Pre-900:
From the Middle English adjective schort (short),
from the Old English sċeort & sċort (short, not long, not tall; brief),
from the Old High German scurz (short),
from the Proto-West Germanic skurt,
from the Proto-Germanic skurta & skurtaz (short), from the primitive Indo-European
sker & ker (to cut (on the notion of “something cut off) in the same sense
as the Sanskrit krdhuh (shortened,
maimed, small)). It was cognate with
shirt, skirt & curt, the Scots short &
schort (short), the French court, the
German kurz, the Old High German scurz (short (source of the Middle High
German schurz)), the Old Norse skorta (shortness, scarcity a lack
(source of the Danish skorte)) & skera (to cut), the Albanian shkurt (short, brief), the Latin curtus (shortened, incomplete) & cordus (late-born (originally
"stunted in growth)), the Proto-Slavic kortъkъ,
the Old Church Slavonic kratuku, the Russian
korotkij (short), the Lithuanian skursti (to be stunted) & skardus (steep), the Old Irish cert (small) and the Middle Irish corr (stunted, dwarfish).
The
verb shorten (1510) (make shorter) had by the 1560s encompassed "grow
shorter"; the earlier form of the verb was simply short, from Old English sceortian (to grow short, become short;
run short, fail), the fork gescyrtan meaning
"to make short". The meaning
"having an insufficient quantity" is from 1690s, the idea of someone "rude"
is attested from the late fourteenth century.
The sense of someone "easily provoked; short of temper" is
from the 1590s but etymologists prefer the origin being "not long (ie
short) in tolerating" rather than a link to a “short fuse” which would
cause gunpowder quickly to explode, although that is the modern form. There are conventions of use: short is often
used in the positive vertical dimension and used as is shallow in the negative
vertical dimension; in the horizontal dimension narrow is more commonly used. Short & brief (as opposed to long) indicate
slight extent or duration and short may imply duration but is also applied to
physical distance and certain purely spatial relations (a short journey) while
brief refers especially to duration of time (a brief interval). Synonyms (according to context) includes abbreviated,
brief, crisp, precise, shortened, terse, low, small, thick, tiny, limited,
poor, shy, slender, slim, tight, sharp, fragile, bare & compressed. Short is a noun, verb, adverb &
adjective, shortness is a noun, shorter shorted & shortest are adjectives,
shorted & shorting are verbs and shortly is an adverb.
Derived
forms include shortage (limited supply) (1862 from US English), shorty (short
person) (1888), shortfall (something falling short of expectations) (1895), shorthand
(a method of rapid writing used to record dictation or other speech) (1636), shorts
(short pants) (1826 and uniquely applied to trousers, short-sleeved shirts etc
never using the form) and the intriguing short shorts (1946 describing men's
briefs, now often called boxer shorts (1949)), shortcoming (1670s) (an
expression of inadequacy and usually used in the plural), shortly, from the Old
English scortlice (briefly also in
late Old English) (in short time; soon; not long), shortness (1570s), from the Old
English scortnes and now used mostly
in the sense of “shortness of breath”, shortstop (1837) (a fielding position in
various sports (although has faded in cricket)), shortcut (1610s) (often as short-cut,
(path not as long as the ordinary way)) although the term may have been longer
in oral use because the figurative sense is documented from the 1580s; it’s familiar
now as “a desktop pointer to files more deeply nested” since file-loading graphical
user interfaces (GUIs) were bolted atop computer operating systems in the
1980s. Shortening (1540s) (action of
making short) was a verbal noun from shorten and the meaning "butter or
other fat used in baking" (1796) was from shorten in the sense "make
crumbly" (1733), from the adjective short in the early fifteenth century secondary
sense of "easily crumbled" which may have been linked to the idea of
"having short fibers" and from this, came shortbread (1755) and
shortcake (1590).
The noun
& verb shortlist (to cull someone from a long list and place them on a
shorter list of those to be considered for advancement or preferment) dates from
1955, although the noun form short list (and short-list) had existed in this
sense since 1927; the shortlist is now most celebrated in literary awards, the
appearance on one something of an award in itself. The short-timer (1906) was "one whose
term or enlistment is about to expire" and was used variously in
employment, sports teams and the military (the similar short-term was noted in
1901). Short-wave (1907) was a reference
to the broadcast radio wavelength less than circa 100 meters, used for long
distance transmission. Short handed in
the sense of "having too few hands (employees)" dates from 1794, the
use in ice hockey noted first in 1939. Short-lived
was from the 1580s and later assumed a specific technical definition in nuclear
& high-energy particle physics. The short-sleeve
(of a shirt or blouse etc), although presumably a garment design of longstanding
was first documented in the 1630s in a regulation issued in the Massachusetts
Bay colony, forbidding "short
sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arme may be discovered”, a notion
still part of the dress-code in some societies.
The first use of short-sighted was in the 1620s, surprisingly a
reference to someone “lacking foresight”, the literal use in optometry to
describe myopia not adopted until the 1640s.
The short-order was restaurant jargon from 1897, from the adverbial
expression “in short order” (rapidly, with no fuss) and survives functionally
as the “short order cook” in the fast food industry. The electrical short-circuit
(the usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a
circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it) was first
described in 1854. The use as a verb (introduce
a shunt of low resistance) began in 1867; the intransitive sense from 1902 and
the figurative sense (to interfere with some process and stop it) is recorded
by 1899. The short haul was US use from
the 1950s to describe a commercial airline flight of short duration. The blended noun shortgevity apparently
exists as a (rarely used) back-formation from longevity.
Something
described as “short and sweet”, dates from the 1530s and is something unexpectedly
brief and can be applied positively, neutrally or negatively. To be “caught short” is feeling a sudden need
to urinate or defecate in circumstances where a loo is not conveniently
accessible. To “fall short” is to prove inadequate
for some task or to fail to reach or measure up to a standard or
expectations. In cinema the “short film”
carries a connotation of something artistic where as “shorts” are often just
fillers in a commercial space. A
“short-seller” is one “shorting stocks”, a method of trading in which positions
are placed to attempt to profit from a expected decline in the future price of
the stock. To be “cut short” is to be
interrupted in some way by someone or something. To have someone “by the short and curlies” is
to have someone completely in one's power, an allusion to pubic hair, hence the
related (and more evocative) phrase “they
have us by the scrotum”. Having the
“short end of the stick” is to receive the most disadvantageous part of
something (analogous with “drawing the short straw”, a literal practice used to
allocate an undesirable task, usually in the absence of volunteers. To give “short shrift” (often incorrectly
expressed as “short shift”) to someone is to be dismissive. The “long and short of it” is a brief,
succinct explanation of something; gist of the matter. Something “short for” (contraction of a name
or phrase) is a more convenient form of a longer word or phrase (such as bus
for omnibus and ETA for expected time or arrival). That use dates from 1873 but the forms have
altered over time: Psycho by 1921 was campus slang for psychology, use extended
to cover psychologists by 1925 but this has since shifted to be a reference to psychopaths,
the change thought provoked by the frequency with which the word came to be
used in popular culture. To “short change”
someone originally (1903) meant not to give someone all the change they were
due in a financial transaction; now mostly used figuratively. The “short story” was obviously an ancient
form of writing but as a defined genre in literature, was first labelled in 1877. To “make short work” of something is quickly
to complete the task, the phrase first noted in the 1570s. To be “short by the
knees” was to be kneeling, attested since 1733; to be "short by the head" dates
from the 1540s and was to be beheaded.
In 1897 a short was also a term for a street car (trolley bus), so
called both because the street cars and the rides taken in them were shorter (respectively
in length and duration) than railroad cars.
Of machinery
short & long
The
stretching of military and commercial airframes has for decades been common
practice, the objective usually to increase carrying capacity (passengers,
freight, weapons etc). Unusually, with
the Boeing 747 (the original jumbo jet), there were variations both short and
long. The origin of the term jumbo-jet seem
to lie in the slang adopted by Boeing’s engineers circa 1960 (the first
reference in print apparently in 1964), during the early planning for the project
which would first fly in 1969. Then called
the jumbo-707, it was soon shortened to jumbo-jet, probably because a three
syllable phrase is always likely to prevail over one with seven. The term jumbo-jet came to refer to all
wide-bodied (ie multi-aisled) passenger airplanes but has always tended most to
be associated with Boeing’s 747. Highly
successful and as influential on the economics of the industry in the 1970s as
the 707 had been in the 1950s, the basic platform was offered in an stretched
version (747-8) in 2005, the fuselage lengthened from 232 feet (71 m) to 251
feet (77 m).
The original 747-100 series (1969, left), the elongated 747-8 (2005, centre) and the shortened 747SP (1975).
Unusually
however, in 1975 Boeing announced a short version, named 747SP (Special Performance),
the lower weight improving fuel consumption, permitting operators to fly long-haul
routes non-stop. Some 47 feet (14 m)
shorter than the original 747-100 series, the SP entered service in 1976 but
was never as commercially successful as Boeing hoped, only 45 of the projected
200-odd ever built. Had fuel remained
cheap demand may have been higher but every analysis confirmed the role
envisaged for the SP would be more economically served with a new generation of
two-engined jumbos and this was the path pursued both by Boeing and Airbus.
1965 Mercedes-Benz 600s: Four-door Pullman (background) & the standard saloon (foreground).
Short is
a relative term. The standard
Mercedes-Benz 600 (W100, 1963-1981) at some 5.54m (218.1 inches) in length was
long by most standards but informally, it’s always been referred to as the SWB (short
wheelbase) because the companion Pullman model was even more imposing at 6.24 m
(245.7 inches), the elongation effected by extending the wheelbase from 3.2 m
(126 inches) to 3.9 m (153.5 inches). Some
sources refer to the bigger car as a LWB but the factory designation was always
Pullman. US manufacturers habitually
used a variety of wheelbases on the platforms which began to proliferate during
the 1960s but didn’t much reference the dimension in advertising and never in
model designations. The British and Europeans,
with smaller ranges, often did both, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz & BMW all designating
their long wheelbase saloons with an appended “L” (short for Long or Lang), the Germans for decades maintaining
the distinction although Jaguar found demand for their (shorter) standard wheelbase
XJ declined to the extent that production was halted and the long wheelbase (LWB)
became standard. Introduced initially as
an extra-cost option in 1972 on the XJ12 and Daimler Double Six, the LWB began
as a niche model for those wanting more rear-seat leg room (1105 sold compared
with 3008 of the SWB) but by 1974, such had the demand profile changed that the
SWB platform was restricted to the lovely but doomed two-door XJC (coupé,
1975-1978). When the XJC was cancelled,
all XJs were built on the LWB platform, now marketed without the obviously superfluous
“L” badge.
1928 Mercedes-Benz SSK (left) & 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770K.
Mercedes-Benz
didn’t always make it easy to work out what was long and what was short. The “K” in SSK (W06, 1928-1932) is short for
kurz (short) which was fine given it was a SWB version of the SS but the 770K (W07,
1930-1938 & W150, 1939-1943) was anything but short, the “K” short for kompressor
(supercharger). Further to complicate things
the SSK was supercharged but presumably SSKK might have been thought a bit much
although there was a lightweight version of the SSK called SSKL (W06, 1929),
the “L” short for licht (light) which was, again, fine except “L” would later
appear simultaneously as short forms of both licht & lang. This duplication of meaning has seemed always to
lack the expected Teutonic exactitude.
Wearing it well: Lindsay Lohan in shorts.
1959 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder (LWB) (left) & 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder SWB (right).
Lengthening
already large saloons to provide more rear-seat space made sense for many, especially
those driven by a chauffeur. However,
with sports cars or other machines intended for competition, the tendency is to
shorten, this reducing weight and improving agility although the combination of
high power and a short wheelbase can induce some handling characteristics best
explored by expert hands.
Ferrari's
250 (1952-1964) series of sports cars, cabriolets and coupés was significant
not only for the many successes achieved on the track but also because it was
the first model to be built in commercially viable numbers for sale to the
public. In this, the 250 set the template
for the generations of road-cars which the factory would offer in succeeding
decades, models which would provide not only the basis for the lightweight,
high-performance variants used in racing but much of the funding as well. All but a handful of the 250s were built
either on the original 2.6 m (102.4 inch) wheelbase or the later (SWB) of 2.4 m
(94.5 inch). After the release of the
SWB (which became the factory designation), the term LWB was retrospectively
(and unofficially) applied to the longer frames.
The 250s had attracted much attention in the US market but the overwhelming response was that there was demand for a luxury cabriolet. Accordingly, Ferrari's coachbuilder Scaglietti's created a roadster called the 250 GT California Spyder on the standard (LWB) platform and between 1957-1959 produced a run of fifty. In the days before the quantitative easing (creating money and giving it to the rich) programmes run during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis 2008-2012) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) when a million dollars was still a lot of money, a California Spider set a then world-record for a car sold at open auction, the hammer dropping at US$12 million. The 250 GT Berlinetta (coupé) had been released in SWB form in 1959 and it was on this platform the revised 250 GT California Spyder SWB was shown at the 1960 Geneva Motor Show. Using the same proportions which would become famous on the 250 GTO, as well as the revised lines, the SWB Spyder benefited from being fitted with disc brakes and an updated version of the 3.0 litre (180 cubic inch) Colombo V12.
Wearing it not so well: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; head of state (1934-1945) and government (1933-1945) in Nazi Germany) in shorts.
So much in Nazism (and fascism generally) was fake spectacle that much emphasis was always given to the few things of note which were real (Hitler’s Iron Crosses (though he rarely wore the "First Class" one), Göring's war record, Goebbels' PhD etc), the importance to the regime of spectacle at the time suspected but not fully understood until the post-war years. All politicians carefully cultivate their image but Hitler was singularly careful and diligent in preparation, these photographs in shorts (Bavarian Lederhosen (leather trousers)) taken for him to assess their suitability for use as publicity shots. Unsurprisingly, he rejected them as “beneath my dignity” and ordered the negatives destroyed but they ended up in the photographer's archive.
