Word.ws English Dictionary

shorten up

shorten up verb: to make something shorter in height, briefer in duration or more close together.

Verb

shorten up (third-person singular simple present shortens up, present participle shortening up, simple past and past participle shortened up)

  1. (informal, intransitive, transitive) To make something shorter in height, briefer in duration or more close together.
    • You have to shorten this movie up.
    • Muscles that don't get exercise will shorten up.

Forms of shorten up

third-person singular presentshortens up
present participleshortening up
past participleshortened up
pastshortened up

Questions about shorten up

What does shorten up mean?
Shorten up means to make something shorter in height, briefer in duration or more close together.
What part of speech is shorten up?
Shorten up is a verb.
What is the past tense of shorten up?
The past tense of shorten up is shortened up.

Words near shorten up in the dictionary

  1. shorted out
  2. Shortell
  3. Shortells
  4. shorten
  5. shorten down
  6. shorten up
  7. shortenable
  8. shortened
  9. shortened down
  10. shortened up
  11. shortener

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shorten up (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: “shorten up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shorten_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.