as in to reduce
to make less in extent or duration
we decided to shorten the distance we had to walk home by cutting across the neighbor's lawn if Grandma has to go shopping today, you'll need to shorten your visit
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Recent Examples of shorten
One proposal would be to shorten the extension of the subsidy to two years and make changes to the program, particularly to root out fraud.
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Dallas Morning News, 8 Jan. 2026
Taking zinc on the first day symptoms appear shortens the duration of respiratory viruses, such as the common cold and COVID-19.
—Megan Nunn, Verywell Health, 7 Jan. 2026
Those odds shortened Wednesday morning from +150 (40 percent chance).
—Hannah Vanbiber, New York Times, 7 Jan. 2026
The agency on Monday shortened the list of vaccines recommended for all children, dropping the number of diseases targeted from 18 to 11 — an unprecedented change that conflicts with guidance from medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics.
—Aria Bendix, NBC news, 7 Jan. 2026
See All Example Sentences for shorten
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shorten
Verb
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During his January 2025 State of the State address, Little called for tax cuts that could reduce the state’s general fund by about $100 million.—
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To reduce sizes, builders are going back to open floor plans with fewer hallways.—
Verb
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This production, directed by David Cromer and co-starring Namir Smallwood, also ran twice at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago (with the first run curtailed by the pandemic) before moving to Broadway.—
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In virtually all cases outside of Detroit, newspapers concluded their partnerships with mergers, one partner shuttering its operations or the smaller paper dramatically curtailing operations.—
Verb
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Things had to be truncated or moved around, but a lot of the favorite moments have made it in.—
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The president dares not truncate this process of legal, moral and ethical decision-making.—
Verb
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Warner, abbreviated as WBD, is the parent company of CNN.—
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Hold onto your butts, brochachos, because a lengthy — yet abbreviated — summary of the penultimate season of Stranger Things lies in wait.—
Verb
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Lesson one: Agencies cannot abridge free speech by forcing people to parrot the government’s ideological message.—
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That set off a chain of social and legal arguments that led to the 2015 Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges, which held that the right to marry was covered by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and could not be abridged or denied license by the government.—
Verb
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After frost has killed the aboveground vegetation, cut back cannas and dahlias and dig them.—
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That means possibly needing to cut back on spending, work a year or two longer, tap into home equity, or lean on family.—
Cite this Entry
“Shorten.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shorten. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.
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