short
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "short", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "short" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "short" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
short is anEnglishadj. It means: Having a small distance from one end or edge to another, either horizontally or vertically. Pronounced /ʃɔːt/. It ranks #472 in English word frequency. Often confused with sor and sot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | short |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ʃɔːt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #472 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for short is 5 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ʃɔːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #472 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 18 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for short, with forms such as "hsort", "shhort", and "shorrt". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "sor", "sot", "show", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker-der.? Proto-Germanic *skertaną Proto-Germanic *skurtaz Proto-West Germanic *skurt Old English sċort Middle English schort English short From Middle English schort, short, from Old English sċeort, sċort (“short”), f… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is short, spelled S-H-O-R-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Having a small distance from one end or edge to another, either horizontally or vertically.
- 2Of a person, living being, or object, having a comparatively small height.
- 3Having little duration.
- 4Of a word or phrase, constituting an abbreviation (for another) or shortened form (of another).
- 5Of a fielder or fielding position, that is relatively close to the batsman.
- 6Of a ball, bowled so that it bounces relatively far from the batsman.
- 7Of an approach shot or putt, that falls short of the green or the hole.
- 8Of betting odds, offering a small return for the money wagered.
- 9Of pastries or (metallurgy) of materials, brittle, crumbly.
- 10Abrupt, brief, pointed, curt.
- 11Limited in quantity; inadequate; insufficient; scanty.
- 12Insufficiently provided; inadequately supplied, especially with money; scantily furnished; lacking.
- 13Deficient; less; not coming up to a measure or standard.
- 14Undiluted; neat.
- 15Not distant in time; near at hand.
- 16Being in a financial investment position that is structured to be profitable if the price of the underlying security declines in the future.
- 17Doubtful of, skeptical of.
- 18Of money, given in the fewest possible notes, i.e. those of the largest denomination.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker-der.? Proto-Germanic *skertaną Proto-Germanic *skurtaz Proto-West Germanic *skurt Old English sċort Middle English schort English short From Middle English schort, short, from Old English sċeort, sċort (“short”), from Proto-West Germanic *skurt, from Proto-Germanic *skurtaz (“short”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker-. Doublet of shirt, skirt, and curt. Cognates Cognate with Scots short, schort (“short”), French court, Dutch kort, German kurz, Old High German scurz (“short”) (whence Middle High German schurz), Old Norse skorta (“to lack”) (whence Danish skorte), Albanian shkurt (“short, brief”), Latin curtus (“shortened, incomplete”) and Proto-Slavic *kortъkъ. See more at shirt.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hsort,shhort,shorrt,shortt,shotr,shrot,sohrt,sshort
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for short
Misspelling Variants of "short"
Frequency rank: #472 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: