abbreviate

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English

Etymology 1

From Middle English abbreviaten, from Latin abbreviātus, perfect passive participle of abbreviō (“to shorten”), formed from ad + breviō (“shorten”), from brevis (“short”). Alternatively, a back-formation from abbreviation. Doublet of abridge.

Pronunciation

Verb

abbreviate (third-person singular simple present abbreviates, present participle abbreviating, simple past and past participle abbreviated)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To shorten by omitting parts or details.
    • 1597, Francis Bacon, Essays:
      It is one thing to abbreviate by contracting, another by cutting off.
  2. (obsolete, intransitive) To speak or write in a brief manner.
  3. (transitive) To make shorter; to shorten (in time); to abridge; to shorten by ending sooner than planned.
    • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎:
      But as delivery schedules have dwindled into hours, even the gigantic warehouse full of stuff in a central place such as the triangle is proving insufficient. Now, companies also need smaller distribution centres around the country, to respond rapidly to orders and to abbreviate the last mile as much as possible.
  4. (transitive) To reduce a word or phrase by means of contraction or omission to a shorter recognizable form.
    bovine spongiform encephalopathy is more commonly known by its abbreviated form BSE.
  5. (transitive, mathematics) To reduce to lower terms, as a fraction.
    Synonym: simplify
Synonyms
Antonyms
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Translations

Etymology 2

From Late Latin abbreviātus, perfect passive participle of abbreviō (“abbreviate”).

Pronunciation

Adjective

abbreviate (comparative more abbreviate, superlative most abbreviate)

  1. (obsolete) Abbreviated; abridged; shortened.
    • 1892, J. J. Earle, The philology of the English tongue:
      The abbreviate form has never been able to recover that shock.
  2. (biology) Having one part relatively shorter than another or than the ordinary type.
Translations

Noun

abbreviate (plural abbreviates)

  1. (obsolete, Scotland) An abridgment.
Translations
abridgment — see abridgment

References

  1. ^ Elliott K. Dobbie, C. William Dunmore, Robert K. Barnhart, et al. (editors), Chambers Dictionary of Etymology (Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2004 , →ISBN), page 2
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Lesley Brown, editor-in-chief, William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, editors (2002), “abbreviate”, in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5th edition, Oxford, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 3.
  3. ^ “abbreviate, n.” in the Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries.

Interlingua

Adjective

abbreviate (comparative plus abbreviate, superlative le plus abbreviate)

  1. Being abbreviated.

Italian

Verb

abbreviate

  1. inflection of abbreviare:
    1. second-person plural present indicative
    2. second-person plural imperative

Anagrams

Latin

Verb

abbreviāte

  1. second-person plural present active imperative of abbreviō
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