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The act of making or becoming short or shorter.

Representation in a foreshortened mode or way.

The act of shortening, or reducing.

Serving or tending to abbreviate; shortening; abridging.

Shortening by apocope; the state of being apocopated.

colonel, and below a major general. He commands a brigade, and is sometimes called, by a shortening of his title, simple a brigadier.

The power possessed by the fibers of living muscle of contracting or shortening.

The act or process of contracting, shortening, or shrinking; the state of being contracted; as, contraction of the heart, of the pupil of the eye, or of a tendion; the contraction produced by cold.

than it really is; as, to fake a bulldog, by burning his upper lip and thus artificially shortening it.

The act of retracting or shortening; as, the retraction of a severed muscle; the retraction of a sinew.

and Sails. Running rigging (Naut.), all those ropes used in bracing the yards, making and shortening sail, etc., such as braces, sheets, halyards, clew lines, and the like. -- Standing rigging (Naut.), the shrouds and stays.

of, as musical strings, by pressing them against the finger board with the finger, or by shortening in any way the vibrating part.

The shortening of the long syllable.

To make ready or right by cutting or shortening; to clip or lop; to curtail; as, to trim the hair; to trim a tree. " And trimmed the cheerful lamp." Byron.