Adjacent Words

Abbreviation definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

ABBREVIA'TION, n.
1. The act of shortening or contracting.
2. A letter or a few letters used for a word; as Gen. for Genesis; U.S.A. for United States of America.
3. The reduction of fractions to the lowest terms.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a shortened form of a word or phrase
2: shortening something by omitting parts of it

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 15th century 1. the act or result of abbreviating ; abridgment 2. a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in place of the whole <amt is an abbreviation for amount>

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 an abbreviated form, esp. a shortened form of a word or phrase. 2 the process of abbreviating.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Abbreviation Ab*bre`vi*a"tion, n. [LL. abbreviatio: cf. F. abbr['e]viation.] 1. The act of shortening, or reducing. 2. The result of abbreviating; an abridgment. --Tylor. 3. The form to which a word or phrase is reduced by contraction and omission; a letter or letters, standing for a word or phrase of which they are a part; as, Gen. for Genesis; U.S.A. for United States of America. 4. (Mus.) One dash, or more, through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, or demi-semiquavers. --Moore.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(abbreviations) An abbreviation is a short form of a word or phrase, made by leaving out some of the letters or by using only the first letter of each word. The postal abbreviation for Kansas is KS. N-COUNT

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. Shortening (by cutting off), curtailment, contraction, reduction, condensation, compression, brief, compend, compendium, abstract, epitome. See abridgment.

Moby Thesaurus

abbreviature, abrege, abridgment, abstract, apocope, aposiopesis, astriction, astringency, blue-penciling, bottleneck, bowdlerization, brief, cancellation, capsule, censoring, censorship, cervix, circumscription, clipping, coarctation, compactedness, compaction, compend, compression, compressure, concentration, condensation, condensed version, consolidation, conspectus, constriction, constringency, contraction, contracture, crasis, curtailment, cutting, decrease, deletion, digest, diminuendo, draft, editing, elision, ellipsis, epitome, erasure, expurgation, foreshortening, head, hourglass, hourglass figure, isthmus, knitting, narrow place, narrowing, neck, omission, outline, overview, pandect, precis, pruning, puckering, pursing, recap, recapitulation, reduction, retrenchment, review, rubric, shortened version, shortening, skeleton, sketch, solidification, stranglement, strangulation, striction, stricture, striking, summary, summation, survey, syllabus, syncope, syneresis, synopsis, systole, telescoping, thumbnail sketch, topical outline, truncation, wasp waist, wrinkling