abbreviation

noun

Etymology: First attested 1400–50. From Middle English abbreviacioun, from Middle French abreviation, from Ecclesiastical Latin abbreviātiō, from Latin ad + breviō (“shorten”), from brevis (“short”). By surface analysis, abbreviate + -ion.

1. The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment.
2. A shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase used to represent the whole, using omission of letters, and sometimes substitution of letters, or duplication of initial letters to signify plurality, including signs such as +, =, @.

   “Hants is an abbreviation of Hampshire.”

   “Americans, for example, call newcomers to Antarctica “fingies”, which comes from FNGs – a borrowed military abbreviation that means “Fucking New Guy”.”

3. The process of abbreviating.
4. A notation used in music score to denote a direction, as pp or mf.
5. One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, or hemidemisemiquavers.
6. Any convenient short form used as a substitution for an understood or inferred whole.

   “The phrase "civil rights" is an abbreviation for a whole complex of relationships.”

7. Loss during evolution of the final stages of the ancestral ontogenetic pattern.
8. Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.