Wiktionary
vb. 1 To come to a sudden and unexpected stop, particularly while speaking or driving a vehicle. 2 Usually with ''of'', to voluntarily cease an attempt to reach a certain point.
Usage examples of "stop short".
At my side, I heard Hal's heavy breathing stop short, as though he were tensing to spring.
I was just thinking about inversions that proceed as far as the molecular level but stop short of the atomic, the subatomic.
But oppositions have the illimitable range of objections at command, which need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw forever on the vasts of ignorance.
Others took the opposite view and hated the noise and destruction with a violence that did not stop short of action.
Master Florian did not stop short at his entrance, but, turning half round upon his heel, and abruptly directing to the Provost the harangue which a moment before he was launching forth against Quasimodo—.