Word.ws English Dictionary

short hand

short hand is the alternative form of shorthand.

Meaning of shorthand

Noun

shorthand (countable and uncountable, plural shorthands)

  1. A rough and rapid method of writing by substituting symbols for letters, words, etc.
    • There is a Notion prevails among many People, to yͤ prejudice of all kinds of Short-hand; which is this. That when a Person sets down a Memorandum in his pocket Book in Short-hand, it is lost, in caſe of Death or any other accident, to yͤ rest of yͤ World, though it may contain things of great...1747 November 30, Aulay Macaulay, “Advertisement”, in Polygraphy or Short-hand Made Easy to the Meanest Capacity: Being an Universal Character Fitted to All Languages: […], London: Printed for the...
    Antonyms:
    longhand
  2. (broadly) Any brief or shortened way of saying or doing something.
    • The jargon becomes a shorthand for these advanced concepts.

See all 5 meanings of shorthand

Forms of short hand

pluralshort hands

Questions about short hand

What is short hand the alternative form of?
Short hand is the alternative form of shorthand.

Words near short hand in the dictionary

  1. short fuse
  2. short fuses
  3. Short Green
  4. short gross
  5. short hairs
  6. short hand
  7. short handed
  8. short hands
  9. short haul
  10. short hauls
  11. short head

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: short hand (page history and authors); shorthand (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “short hand.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/short_hand. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.