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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
shortening
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A further characteristic to aid a correct diagnosis is a marked shortening of the bloom stalks.
▪ After 4 months, cardiac function was reassessed: fractional shortening and ejection fraction was 33% and 47%, respectively.
▪ Lastly, we might note the apparent similarity of this exercise to the traditional exercise of precis, the shortening of texts.
▪ When the shortening is melted, turn off the heat and immediately add the chocolate.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Shortening

Shortening \Short"en*ing\, n.

  1. The act of making or becoming short or shorter.

  2. (Cookery) That which renders pastry short or friable, as butter, lard, etc.

Shortening

Shorten \Short"en\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Shortened ?; p. pr. & vb. n. Shortening.] [See Short, a.]

  1. To make short or shorter in measure, extent, or time; as, to shorten distance; to shorten a road; to shorten days of calamity.

  2. To reduce or diminish in amount, quantity, or extent; to lessen; to abridge; to curtail; to contract; as, to shorten work, an allowance of food, etc.

    Here, where the subject is so fruitful, I am shortened by my chain.
    --Dryden.

  3. To make deficient (as to); to deprive; -- with of.

    Spoiled of his nose, and shortened of his ears.
    --Dryden.

  4. To make short or friable, as pastry, with butter, lard, pot liquor, or the like.

    To shorten a rope (Naut.), to take in the slack of it.

    To shorten sail (Naut.), to reduce sail by taking it in.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
shortening

1540s, "action of making short," verbal noun from shorten. Meaning "butter or other fat used in baking" (1796) is from shorten in the sense "make crumbly" (1733), from short (adj.) in the secondary sense of "easily crumbled" (early 15c.), which perhaps arose via the notion of "having short fibers." This is the short in shortbread and shortcake.

Wiktionary
shortening

n. 1 (lb en US cooking) Solid fat, such as butter, lard or hydrogenated vegetable oil, used to make shortcrust pastry. 2 (verbal noun of shorten English) vb. (present participle of shorten English)

WordNet
shortening
  1. n. fat such as butter or lard used in baked goods

  2. act of decreasing in length; "the dress needs shortening"

Wikipedia
Shortening

Shortening is any fat that is a solid at room temperature and used to make crumbly pastry and other food products. Shortening is used in pastries that should not be elastic, such as cake. Although butter is solid at room temperature and is frequently used in making pastry, the term "shortening" seldom refers to butter, but is more closely related to margarine.

Usage examples of "shortening".

Again, keeping the amplitude constant, the intensity of stimulus is increased by shortening the wire.

Every day Malemute Kid led the girl out on long walks devoted to the correction of her carriage and the shortening of her stride.

The Horsekin riders were yelling and grabbing manes and necks, shortening up on their reins, clutching their saddle peaks anything to keep from being thrown.

The river crossing had cost them energy he hoped to recoup by shortening their journey.

After a while she began puzzling and mentally shearing off his beard and shortening and restyling his hair.

One bright frosty morning, the sermon happening to have no relation to the light around or within them, but only to the covenant made with Abraham--such a legal document constituting the only reliable protection against the character, inclinations, and duties of the Almighty, whose uncovenanted mercies are of a very doubtful nature--Annie, neither able to enter into the subject, nor to keep from shivering with the cold, tried to amuse herself with gazing at one brilliant sun-streak on the wall, which she had discovered to be gradually shortening itself, and retreating towards the window by which it had entered.

For while a small, and, politically speaking, uninfluential, party are prepared to make every sacrifice and run all risks in order to blot out slavery on the instant, the influential and acting leaders of the majority, whatever their occasional language of denunciation, and affectation of horror, are not disposed to brave the rebellion of the South, and the possible disruption of the Republic, for the sake of shortening the thraldom of the negro some fifty years.

There I untied the leash and then retied it, considerably shortening it.

He used a colloquial shortening of the phrase as soon as possible transliterated from their outland tongue-the outland trick of using the initial letters of each word in a phrase to represent the phrase itself was one that was creeping steadily into the Wathe as well.

You may immediately roll out both crusts, or wrap each disk in plastic and refrigerate for 15 to 30 minutesif this is more convenient or if the kitchen is very warm or if you have used lard and butter as your shortening.

I reasoned, not as one that hopes, but rather as one that foresaw that Edgar would hinder me from shortening my days.

He had a curious recollection of how his knowledge of Inchling and his wife being always in concert, entirely--whatever they might think in private --devoted to him in action, had influenced, if it had not originally sprung, his resolve to cast off the pestilential cloak of obscurity shortening his days, and emerge before a world he could illumine to give him back splendid reflections.

If you could only see how many spirits there are in darkness who cling to human bodies and obsess people and send them to the asylums, or to the spirit world by shortening their lives.

The ship flew before the strong westerlies and we sailormen were up and down the rigging like monkeys, often led by the fearless Captain himself, shortening or furling sails when gales blew, shaking them out when the wind slackened.

Out of the corner of his eye Crosby also noted with some interest the hesitating hoverings of a human figure, which had passed and repassed his seat two or three times at shortening intervals, like a wary crow about to alight near some possibly edible morsel.