noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Fat that is solid at room temperature, especially hydrogenated vegetable oil (known as vegetable shortening), used to make shortcrust pastry and in deep fat frying. US, countable, uncountable
2. 2
   act of decreasing in length wordnet
3. 3
   verbal noun of shorten: the process by which something is made shorter; a reduction in length. countable, form-of, noun-from-verb, uncountable
4. 4
   fat such as butter or lard used in baked goods wordnet

Verb

1. 1
   present participle and gerund of shorten form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms

abbreviationabridgmentabridgmentabstractastringencyattrition

Antonyms

All antonyms

extensionlengthening

Example

More examples

"The days are gradually shortening."

Related phrases

shortening timestretch shortening cyclevegetable shortening

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.