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To make short or shorter in measure, extent, or time; as, to shorten distance; to shorten a road; to shorten days of calamity.

To wrinkle, bend, or curl; to shrivel; hence, to contract into a less extent or compass; to gather together; to become compacted. And on a broken reed he still did stay His feeble steps, which shrunk when hard thereon he lay. Spenser. I have not found that water, by mixture of ashes, will shrink or draw into less room.…

Extent of superficies or volume; bulk; bigness; magnitude; as, the size of a tree or of a mast; the size of a ship or of a rock.

In or to small extent, quantity, or degree; little; slightly. [Obs.] "I wept but small." Chaucer. "It small avails my mood." Shak.

Not much; a little; moderate; as, the censure was to some extent just.

Extending far and wide; vast in extent. "A spacious plain outstretched in circuit wide." Milton.

The spread or extent of an arch between its abutments, or of a beam, girder, truss, roof, bridge, or the like, between its supports.

A small extent of space; a place; any particular place. "Fixed to one spot." Otway. That spot to which I point is Paradise. Milton. "A jolly place," said he, "in times of old! But something ails it now: the spot is cursed." Wordsworth.

th and breadth, or in breadth only; to stretch or expand to a broad or broader surface or extent; to open; to unfurl; as, to spread a carpet; to spread a tent or a sail. He bought a parcel of a field where he had spread his tent. Gen. xxxiii. 19. Here the Rhone Hath spread himself a couch. Byron.

, before acquiring title. In such a tract, squatters and trespassers were tolerated to an extent now unknown. Macaulay.

That which is established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, extent, value, or quality; esp., the original specimen weight or measure sanctioned by government, as the standard pound, gallon, or yard.

Limit; bound; restraint; extent. God has wrote upon no created thing the utmost stint of his power. South.

The extent to which anything may be stretched. Quotations, in their utmost stretch, can signify no more than that Luther lay under severe agonies of mind. Atterbury. This is the utmost stretch that nature can. Granville.

The jurisdiction of a mill, or that extent of ground astricted to it, the tenants of which are bound to bring their grain thither to be ground.

An acid in which, to a greater or less extent, sulphur plays a part analogous to that of oxygen in an oxyacid; thus, thiosulphuric and sulpharsenic acids are sulphacids; -- called also sulphoacid. See the Note under Acid, n., 2.

Performed to an extent not enjoined, or not required, by duty or necessity; as, supererogatory services. Howell.

upersedure. The general law of diminishing return from land would have undergone, to that extent, a temporary supersession. J. S. Mill.

To determine the form, extent, position, etc., of, as a tract of land, a coast, harbor, or the like, by means of linear and angular measurments, and the application of the principles of geometry and trigonometry; as, to survey land or a coast.

Direction and extent of any motion not rectlinear; as, the sweep of a compass.

To increase in size or extent by any addition; to increase in volume or force; as, a river swells, and overflows its banks; sounds swell or diminish.