shortness

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Lack of length

Nouns

1. shortness, brevity, briefness, conciseness; shortening, abbreviation, abridgement, retrenchment, curtailment; compression, condensation, initialism, contraction; reduction, epitome, digest, synopsis, compendium; butt, stub; logogram; short cut. Informal, short haul.

2. abridger, cutter, editor, condenser, shortener.

Verbs — be short, shorten, curtail, abridge, boil down, abstract, condense, digest, abbreviate, take in, reduce; compress, contract; epitomize; retrench, cut short, scrimp, cut, chop up, hack, hew; cut down; clip, dock, lop, prune, bob; take up; cut corners; shear, shave; mow, reap, crop; snub; truncate, stunt, nip in the bud, check the growth of; foreshorten; come to the point.

Adjectives — short, brief, curt, succinct, short and sweet, crisp, epitomized, compendious, compact, concise, summary, stubby, shorn, stubbed; stumpy, thickset, pug; squat, dumpy; dwarfed, dwarfish, little; oblate; sawed-off. Informal, vertically challenged.

Adverbs — shortly, in short; for short, concisely, in brief, in fine, in a nutshell, in a word, in a few words; to come to the point, to make a long story short, to be brief; abruptly.

Phrases — brevity is the soul of wit; less is more.

Quotations — If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed (Pascal), I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short (Pascal), Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything (Samuel Johnson), If there are obstacles, the shortest line between two points may be the crooked line (Bertolt Brecht).

Antonyms, see length, loquacity.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

Syn. brevity, briefness, conciseness; see brevity .