Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use shorten in a sentence

40 example sentences · verb

Shorten means to make shorter; to abbreviate. Example: “The trunk is unbranched, often much shortened, and bears a crown of feathery or pinnate fronds.”

Examples of shorten by meaning

verbTo make shorter; to abbreviate.

  • The full title of the unified system, the South Eastern & London, Chatham & Dover Railways, was decidedly cumbersome, and for the sake of convenience was shortened to the South Eastern & Chatham Railway.1958 November, “The Why and the Wherefore: South Eastern & Chatham Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 809

verbTo reduce or diminish in amount, quantity, or extent; to lessen.

  • to shorten an allowance of food

verbTo dress (a baby) in a short (rather than long) gown.

  • Anne and Leslie had another cry the next week when they shortened Little Jem.1917, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
  • In January Jims was five months old and Rilla celebrated the anniversary by shortening him.1921, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside

More sentences with shorten

  • The trunk is unbranched, often much shortened, and bears a crown of feathery or pinnate fronds.From the entry pinnate
  • After the Apollo 13 accident, the transearth injection burn shortened the return time by about 9 hours.From the entry transearth
  • Shortened from maxiature, ultimately from Latin maximus ("large").From the entry ultimately
  • You have to shorten this movie up.From the entry shorten up
  • Muscles that don't get exercise will shorten up.From the entry shorten up
  • The trousers need to be shortened.From the entry trousers
  • If PESI is fixed, postextrasystolic strength increases as ESI is shortened.2015 August 29, “Implementation of Contraction to Electrophysiological Ventricular Myocyte Models, and Their Quantitative Characterization…. From the entry postextrasystolic
  • Compression shortens the O:H nonbond and lengthens the H-O bond simultaneously via O:H-O Coulomb repulsion.2015, Chang Q. Sun, “Why does pressure melt ice?”, in arXiv. From the entry nonbond
  • However, if you could defragment an SSD, you might shorten the device's lifespan.2013, Dan Gookin, PCs For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN. From the entry defragment
  • Increased respiratory drive also reduced swallowing frequency and shortened duration of preswallow apnea.2012, Issues in Neurological Surgery and Specialties: 2011 Edition. From the entry preswallow
  • A third technique deals with the problem of the shortened aryepiglottal fold.2010, Karl Hörmann, Surgery for Sleep Disordered Breathing, page 195. From the entry aryepiglottal
  • Soon that's what we shortened it to, and what she is known by to this day.2009, Princess Kasune Zulu, Warrior Princess, IVP Books, →ISBN, page 80. From the entry joy
  • I think the answer was that it arose as a shortened form of "amn't I".2009 August 21, Athel Cornish-Bowden, “mayn't”, in alt.usage.english (Usenet), retrieved 13 Jun 2022. From the entry I'mn't
  • You can't even shorten Brian to Bri without it sounding like a kind of cheese!2008, Phill Young, FarArc, Author House, →ISBN, page 145. From the entry brian
  • They have shortened their stump speeches and are spending less time greeting supporters.2008 November 3, John M. Broder, Julie Bosman, “In States Once Reliably Red, Palin and Biden Tighten Their Stump Speeches”, in The New…. From the entry stump speech
  • The traditional sequence of pre-treatment is shortened by single stage bleaching, where kiers are still in use.1999, Samir Ranjan Karmakar, Chemical Technology In The Pre-Treatment Processes Of Textiles, Elsevier, page 65. From the entry kier
  • The best way to deal with motion is to shorten the acquisition time.1998, G. Scott Gazelle, Sanjay Saini, Peter R. Mueller, Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Radiology: Imaging and Intervention, page 64. From the entry acquisition time
  • When praying in winter — and the winter in Regensburg was very cold — one should not shorten the prayers.2024, David Golinkin, “Should the cantor pray slowly or shorten the service?”, in Responsa in a Moment, volume 4, page 8. From the entry warmly
  • The Piccadilly Line was originally the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway (GNP&BR) which was shortened to Piccadilly in practice.2024 March 6, Stefanie Foster, “The changing face of the Piccadilly...”, in RAIL, number 1004, page 52. From the entry piccadilly
  • Travel time from Dongjin to Fancheng in Xiangyang City will soon be shortened from 45 minutes to less than 10 minutes.2022 November 1, “First highway tunnel in Hanjiang River opens”, in Luo Pan, editor, China News Service, archived from the original on 01…. From the entry Dongjin
  • Mats is the shortened version of materials.[2020 November 28, Gökhan Çakır, “Common Fortnite terms and their meanings”, in Dot Esports, archived from the original on 21 May 2023. From the entry mat
  • Shorten said vote one Labor, for the future.2019 May 16, Katharine Murphy, “Campaign catchup 2019: close race sparks pre-election jitters”, in The Guardian. From the entry swinger
  • Notice how pre-fortis clipping shortens the vowels.2013, Beverley Collins, Inger M. Mees, Practical Phonetics and Phonology: A Resource Book for Students. From the entry pre-fortis
  • My “routine” is at night so as to shorten the morning get readies and start work on time.2011 December 27, Ken Jacuzzi with Diane Holloway, “This Is Your Life, Ken Jacuzzi!”, in Jacuzzi: A Father’s Invention to Ease a Son’s…. From the entry pot
  • Isa is my paternal grandmother's name (shortened from Isabel) and May my maternal grandmother's (it comes, somehow, from Margaret).2010, Margaret Forster, Isa & May, Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, page 5. From the entry may
  • The writer adopted the initials after his nom de plume, Aeon, was once shortened accidentally through printer's devilry.2002, Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins: The Man Who Made Ireland, Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, page 445. From the entry printer's devilry
  • If you shorten them to 'Mel' and 'Perry', they've got a democratically twentieth-century and transatlantic ring to them.1991, Angela Carter, Wise Children, Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, page 16. From the entry Melchior
  • Backwrapping words occurs when enough text is deleted to permit one or more words to be formatted into the shortened line.1983, The Seybold Report on Professional Computing, page 19. From the entry backwrap
  • The better to cut the wind, she had shortened sail and wore a short skirt, black tights, and a skullcap.1930, Edna Ferber, Cimarron, page 24. From the entry getup
  • For example, if the riichi player deals into the Dealer, that shortens the gap between your opponents without you taking any risk.2026, Senba Kurono, 136 Ready-to-Use Mahjong Strategy and Tactics, page 182. From the entry deal into
  • MDM can come from anywhere, any country, and it is seen as a threat to democratic institutions, or “democracy” as it’s so often shortened to.2025 April 15, Christine Menedis, “The Blob”, in Why the World Doesn’t Make Sense: Reclaiming the Liberty You Didn’t Know You Lost…. From the entry MDM
  • Fans wait eagerly for the next episode excited to see more Lumity and to see how the story will progress despite the shortened season.2022, Tiffany Wells, "The Gay Agenda: Being Accepted in Children's Media", thesis submitted to Georgia Southern University, page 36. From the entry Lumity
  • Shorten went to Blacktown to try and summon the spirit of Gough Whitlam to persuade the swingers it was time for a change of government.2019 May 16, Katharine Murphy, “Campaign catchup 2019: close race sparks pre-election jitters”, in The Guardian. From the entry swinger
  • "I think I can fit it in my sched." I shorten the word because I hear the kids doing that all the time around here.2018, Tami Charles, Daphne Definitely Doesn't Do Fashion, North Mankato, M.N.: Stone Arch Books, published 2019, →ISBN, page 29. From the entry sched
  • Multiband manpack systems will generally shorten battery life quicker than single channel tactical radios, and perform better with stable or regulated power sources.2013, November, Army Techniques Publication, numbers 6-02.72, →ISBN, page 62. From the entry manpack
  • The time constants that control one-shot pulse widths can be lengthened or shortened by adding capacitors or resistors in the test fixture.2012, John Turino, Design to Test, →ISBN. From the entry one-shot

Meaning of shorten

  1. verb To make shorter; to abbreviate.
  2. verb To become shorter.
  3. verb To make deficient (as to); to deprive (of).

Full definition of shorten

Questions about shorten in a sentence

How do you use shorten in a sentence?
Shorten is used as a verb. For example: “The trunk is unbranched, often much shortened, and bears a crown of feathery or pinnate fronds.”
What is a short sentence with shorten?
“The trousers need to be shortened.”
What does shorten mean?
Shorten means to make shorter; to abbreviate.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shorten (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use shorten in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/shorten. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.