shortening

American  

[shawrt-ning, shawr-tn-ing] / ˈʃɔrt nɪŋ, ˈʃɔr tn ɪŋ /

noun

1. butter, lard, or other fat, used to make pastry, bread, etc., short.

2. Phonetics. the act, process, or an instance of making or becoming short.

3. Linguistics.

   1. the act or process of dropping one or more syllables from a word or phrase to form a shorter word with the same meaning, as in forming piano from pianoforte or phone from telephone.

   2. clipped form.

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shortening British  

/ ˈʃɔːtənɪŋ /

noun

1. butter, lard, or other fat, used in a dough, cake mixture, etc, to make the mixture short

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Etymology

Origin of shortening

First recorded in 1535–45; shorten + -ing ¹

Example Sentences

Younger eggs, she said, would likely have improved her IVF odds, potentially shortening the years it took to have her children, and reducing costs.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 7, 2026

Friday’s stock-market action might have made for a shortening of memories.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 5, 2026

"We know that Yorkshire has a large number of children in areas of deprivation who've got life shortening conditions," says Vicki Greensmith, director of clinical services.

From BBC • May 27, 2026

It expands the simulation in Syopsys’ chip design software to include electrical, thermal, electromagnetic, and mechanical effects, shortening the chip design pipeline for the increasingly complex architectures coming from AI chip makers.

From Barron's • May 27, 2026

Some scholars believe there is a direct link between the advent of cooking, the shortening of the human intestinal track, and the growth of the human brain.

From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari