abbreviation

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For abbreviations in Wiktionary, see Category:Abbreviations by language

Contents

English [edit]

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Alternative forms [edit]

Etymology [edit]

Pronunciation [edit]

Noun [edit]

abbreviation (plural abbreviations)

  1. The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment. [First attested around 1350 to 1470.][1]
  2. A shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase, used to represent the whole, utilizing omission of letters, and sometimes substitution of letters, or duplication of initial letters to signify plurality, including signs such as, +, =, @. [Late 16th century.][1]
  3. The process of abbreviating. [Mid 16th century.][1]
  4. (music) A notation used in music score to denote a direction, as pp or mf.
  5. (music) One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, or hemidemisemiquavers.
  6. Any convenient short form used as a substitutuion for an understood or inferred whole.
    • the phrase "civil rights" is an abbreviation for a whole complex of relationships. - Pres. Truman's comittee on Civil Rights
  7. (biology) Loss during evolution of the final stages of the ancestral ontogenetic pattern.
  8. (mathematics) Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.

Translations [edit]

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See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 2003 [1933], Brown, Lesley editor, The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, edition 5th, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-860575-7, page 3:
  • abbreviation” in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
  • abbreviation” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, v1.0.1, Lexico Publishing Group, 2006.
  • "abbreviation" in WordNet 3.0, Princeton University, 2006.