shorts
noun
Form of short , plural of short.
Simple meaning
Pants or trousers worn for sports or in warmer weather that do not go lower than the knees.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
shawrtsIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈʃɔɹts
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
Pants or trousers worn for sports or in warmer weather that do not go lower than the knees.
uncountable
Remnants, clippings, trimmings of production processes.
The part of milled grain sifted out which is next finer than the bran; pollard.
Short, inferior hemp.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Pants or trousers worn for sports or in warmer weather that do not go lower than the knees.
Used this way, shorts is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a sporting use: familiar to anyone who follows the game, and puzzling to anyone who does not.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Sports
- News/reporting
- Everyday conversation
Nearby words
- bermuda shorts , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use shorts
- “She likes to wear comfortable shorts when she goes jogging.”
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: pants or trousers worn for sports
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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.