shortness
noun
Simple meaning
The property of being short, of being small of stature or brief.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
shawrtnuhsSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈʃɔɹtnəs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The property of being of short temporal extent
“The shortness of air travel time.”
uncountable
The property of being short, of being small of stature or brief.
The property of being truncated or short
The property of being shorter than average stature
uncountable
The property of being short or terse.
The condition of being short of something
“There was no shortness of money.”
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Typical Use
- Primarily written
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How It’s Used
The word’s distinct uses, one example each.
Propertynoun
“The shortness of air travel time.”
Shortnoun
“There was no shortness of money.”
More ways to use shortness
- “There was no shortness of money.”noun
- “The shortness of air travel time.”noun
- “The shortness of the Channel crossing.”noun
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.