abbreviation
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
- For abbreviations in Wiktionary, see Category:Abbreviations by language
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English [edit]
Alternative forms [edit]
Etymology [edit]
- First attested 1400–50.
- From Middle English abbreviacioun, from Middle French abréviation, from Late Latin abbreviātiō, from ab (“from”) + abbreviō (“make brief”), from Latin ad + breviō (“shorten”), from brevis (“short”).
Pronunciation [edit]
Noun [edit]
abbreviation (plural abbreviations)
- The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment. [First attested around 1350 to 1470.][1]
- 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]
- The process of abbreviating. [Mid 16th century.][1]
- (music) A notation used in music score to denote a direction, as pp or mf.
- (music) One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, or hemidemisemiquavers.
- Any convenient short form used as a substitutuion for an understood or inferred whole.
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- the phrase "civil rights" is an abbreviation for a whole complex of relationships. - Pres. Truman's comittee on Civil Rights
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- (biology) Loss during evolution of the final stages of the ancestral ontogenetic pattern.
- (mathematics) Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.
Translations [edit]
shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase
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abridged version of a document
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act or result of shortening or reducing
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music: one or more dashes through the stem of a note
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mathematics: reduction to lower terms
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked
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See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ↑ 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.
