short circuit

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See also: shortcircuit and short-circuit

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

short + circuit

Noun

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

short circuit (plural short circuits)

  1. (electrical engineering) A usually unintentional connection of low resistance or impedance in a circuit such that excessive and often damaging current flows in it.

Synonyms

Translations

Verb

short circuit (third-person singular simple present short circuits, present participle short circuiting, simple past and past participle short circuited)

  1. (transitive) To cause a short circuit in.
  2. (intransitive) To undergo a short circuit.
  3. (transitive, by extension) To force termination of an ongoing process before its natural conclusion, by bypassing one or more intermediary steps.
    • 1998, Catherine Nickerson, The Web of Iniquity:
      [H]is temporarily successful attempt to smear Redfield is an effort to short-circuit the narrative into premature and mistaken resolution.
    • 2002, Jim Kasper, Short Cycle Selling: Beating Your Competitors in the Sales Race:
      You do not need to follow your entire sales cycle if the customer wants to short-circuit it for you.
    • 2003, Gina Hens-Piazza, Nameless, Blameless, and Without Shame: Two Cannibal Mothers Before a King:
      My mother, determined to short-circuit my outcry, would match my objections by pointing out an inherent reward for doing such work.
  4. (transitive, by extension) To impede or disrupt.
    • 2016 November 28, Mike Vorkunov, “Despite Flash of Rose’s Prime, Knicks Are Dazed by Westbrook and Thunder”, in The New York Times‎:
      At times, the Knicks’ offense looked short-circuited. Anthony, despite his cold hand, kept shooting. / “They all feel good, to be honest with you,” Anthony said. “It wasn’t long, it wasn’t short, they were bouncing off the rim, they were chippers, the same shot I hit all the time so I can’t stop taking my shots.”
  5. (transitive, computing) To terminate a loop before the declared termination condition is met, or a conditional before all conditions have been tested for.
    • 2002, Paul Kimmel, Visual Basic.Net Unleashed:
      For example, to short-circuit the "LoggedIn()" or "LogIn()" "if" conditional, replace the "Or" with "OrElse" and the statement is interpreted to mean "if not logged in, then log in".
    • 2002, Jose Mojico, C# and VB.NET Conversion Pocket Reference:
      If you would like to short-circuit, you must replace "And" with the "AndAlso" keyword and "Or" with the "OrElse" keyword, as follows....
    • 2006: Jay Hillard & Stephen Teilhet, C# Cookbook
      The "Demand" is done to ensure that you have indeed been granted this permission before using the "Assert" to short-circuit the stackwalk.

Usage notes

  • Senses 3 and 4 usually use the hyphenated spelling short-circuit.

Synonyms

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Translations

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