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• short order
  short order

  noun

  a dish or serving of food that is quickly prepared upon request at a lunch counter.
• short-order
  short-order

  adjective

  of, relating to, or specializing in short orders.

short order

¹ American  

noun

1. a dish or serving of food that is quickly prepared upon request at a lunch counter.

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short-order ² American  

[shawrt-awr-der] / ˈʃɔrtˌɔr dər /

adjective

1. of, relating to, or specializing in short orders.

   a short-order cook; short-order diner.

2. performed or supplied quickly.

   They obtained a short-order divorce decree.

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short order British  

noun

1. 1. food that is easily and quickly prepared

   2. ( as modifier )

      short-order counter

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short order Idioms  

1. Quickly; see in short order .

2. An order of food to be prepared and served quickly, as in It's just a diner, serving short orders exclusively . This expression, dating from about 1890, gave rise to the adjective short-order , used not only in short-order cook , a cook specializing in short orders, but in other terms such as short-order divorce , a divorce quickly obtained owing to liberal divorce laws.

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Etymology

Origin of short order¹

First recorded in 1890–95

Origin of short-order²

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

short order short-order

In short order, the AMA would lose a large percentage of its revenue.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026

In short order, SpaceX has become the fifth largest company in the world.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 16, 2026

Had he simply fought Fox’s complaint the right way, he may well have defeated the charges in short order.

From Slate ● Mar. 11, 2026

And at the centre of it all was poor 22-year-old Kinsky, selected ahead of previous first-choice Guglielmo Vicario, but substituted in short order after two slips gifted goals to Marcos Llorente and Julian Alvarez.

From BBC ● Mar. 10, 2026

In short order, I was tooling around the neighborhood with something approaching skill.

From "Schooled" by Gordon Korman

Guests can build their own plates, and I don’t have to spend the evening playing short-order cook.

From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026

In 1966, Duncan was working as a short-order cook at the Sahara, making 400 salads an hour, when she slipped on spilled grease, severely injuring her shoulder, hip and back.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026

Increasingly, studios focused on streaming short-order series with eight to 10 episodes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 14, 2023

“I didn’t know whether she wanted to be a short-order cook or a brain surgeon,” he told me, “but quite frankly, she could write her own ticket doing whatever she wanted to do.”

From New York Times ● Nov. 29, 2022

They were started by door-to-door salesmen, short-order cooks, orphans, and dropouts, by eternal optimists looking for a piece of the next big thing.

From "Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" by Eric Schlosser