Word of the Day: Short

short / SHôrt adjective

1. lacking length or height

The wise person has long ears and a short tongue. German Proverb  

2. brief

Life is short but a smile takes barely a second. Cuban Proverb  

3. quick

As long as you don’t fly openly in the face of society, society doesn’t ask any inconvenient questions; and it makes precious short work of the cads who do. George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950  

4. not retentive

I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! Audrey Hepburn, 1929-1993  

5. in speech, having little duration

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words, like ‘What about lunch?’ A.A. Milne, 1882-1956  

6. extending only a little way

Meditation is the short path to happiness. Frederick Lenz, 1950-1998  

7. abrupt; rude; curt

“I’m sorry I was short with him – but I don’t like a man to approach me telling me it for my sake.” from ‘The Last Tycoon’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896-1940  

8. concise

Do not try to make your headline so short that it fails to express your idea properly. John Caples, 1900-1990  

9. having an insufficient or limited amount of something

I am long on ideas, but short on time. Thomas A. Edison, 1847-1931  

1. easily or quickly provoked

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk. Joseph Joubert, 1754-1824  

1. in cooking, containing shortening

Short pastry is a mixture of flour, fats, liquids (water, milk, eggs), salt and sugar if required to be sweet. www.bakingmatters.co.uk/short-pastry.php   adverb

1. in an abrupt or curt manner

‘Owl’ said Rabbit shortly, ‘you and I have brains.[‘] A.A. Milne, 1882-1956  

2. for a brief time

The scent of every flower is short lived. Italian Proverb  

3. suddenly

But I should have in your place added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways; and one error in particular would be most grave and most frequent, if we always stopped short at the literal signification of the words. Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642  

4. at a point before the goal or limit under consideration

To come up short when you reach too far is not such a bad thing rather than not reach at all, right? David Twohy, 1955-  

5. unawares

There’s Gerard Manly Hopkins in his black Jesuit clothes lying face down on the ground to look at an individual bluebell, Robert Frost who never used a desk, was once caught short by a poem coming and wrote it on the sole of his shoe, T. S. Eliot in his ‘I’m-not-a-Poet’ suit with his solid sensible available-for-poetry three hours a day, Ted Hughes folded into a tiny cubicle at the top of the stairs where there is no window, no sight or smell of earth or animal but the rain clatter on the roof bows him to the page, Pablo Neruda who grandly declared poetry should only ever be handwritten, and then added his own little bit of bonkers by saying: in green ink. from ‘History of the Rain’ by Niall Williams, 1958-   noun

1. plural, pants or trousers which end at the knee or higher

A man should never wear shorts in the city. Flip-flops and shorts in the city are never appropriate. Shorts should only be worn on the tennis court or on the beach. Tom Ford, 1961-  

2. gist

The long and short of it is, we need more rigor in all kinds of programs. Margaret Spellings, 1957-  

3. a miniature movie

I’m fascinated by the way society and individuals view mental illness, and most of my shorts comment on that. Anna Akana, 1989-   verb

1. to cause a connection of relatively low resistance in something mechanical

If it is a battery that is shorted, the battery will be discharged very quickly and will heat up due to the high current flow. https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae470.cfm  

2. to cheat by giving less of something expected

In March, Multicoin shorted all the major cryptocurrencies – a decision that paid off when Bitcoin and its peers fell some 35% during that month alone. Jen Wieczner, ?- www.fortune.com/2018/06/29/cryptocurrency-buy-ethereum-eos-ripple-litecoin/